Big List of Dead People

Arcade Fire Trucks

2012-01-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

EVERYONE JUST REMAIN CALM AND MOVE TO THE EXITS IN AN ORDERLY FASHION!...what?...wait!.....Sorry everyone, false alarm...it's just Arcade Fire again.

2011 in Film: Epic Failures and Modest Successes

2011-12-23T18:32:00.000-08:00

Culture is graded on the curve. Attention is a resource parceled out minute for minute and year for year. And, it's not always a hot minute. Each year will have it's winner, sure, but when you line up each year's winners you tend to see a pattern of the undeserved and the missing. That's not to say there weren't a few great movies this year, but a few, i think, is all we got. That being said, I didn't get around to seeing everything I wanted to, namely: Turin Horse, The Skin I Live In, We need to talk about Kevin, Young Adult, Troll Hunter, The Artist, Certified Copy, A Dangerous Method, and a few others. So, my data set is far from complete.

For me 2011 is the year of "Epic" Failures. I'm talking about Terrence Malick's Tree of Life and Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. While both films show just the kind of ambition that I love to see, neither of them meet that ambition at it's lofty height. Failures only by their own standards.

Tree of Life is the finest character work I've seen yet from Malick, perhaps due to it's autobiographical nature. His little post-war family is well drawn and acted to near perfection. With them, Malick says everything he needs to say about the dual nature of man. And, had the movie stopped there, it would have been flawless, however less ambitious. The human side of the story contains all the Malickesque touches we've come to expect and appreciate from the swooning sun bent cinematography to the heart felt existential voice-overs. But, despite lofty intentions, Malick's eye(and ear)-popping nature montage doesn't convey the raw wonder and epic feeling it reaches for.

In small doses in his other films a brief walk through nature seemed more an attempt to create atmosphere, suggest the pettiness of humanity, or was simply a nice poetic caesura. Here he attempts to work a full blown abridged history of the universe directly in the psyche of his nuclear family in a single cut, or perhaps through osmosis. It's stunning and beautiful at times, but falls short of the "sea contained within the fish" wisdom it portends as well as the Kubrickesque art/specticle it mimics. Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void is another film that attempts to unite the worlds of the avant garde and the traditional narrative to about as much success.

Melancholia takes some beautiful ideas about family, depression, apocalypse, and the process of art and sinks them into characters I couldn't make myself care about.. The depressed learn to deal with loss, art is a doomed process, beauty cannot function without pain and sadness. His themes are solid and provocative. We know Von Trier is a filmmaker capable of telling a captivating story with iconic characters. Yet, here he lets his ideas get the best of his story and the characters and dialogue are at times clumsy and forced.

Von Trier's assumption that the apocalypse is much more interesting when shown in the micro as opposed to the macro is dead on. That's why it worked so well in John Hillcoat's The Road and Micheal Haneke's Time of the Wolf and a litany of other films before them. What those movie's have that this one doesn't are characters worthy of empathy. I really wanted a grasp on Justine and to lesser extant Clair, that I couldn't find. I'm willing to take on sociopaths and depressives. I think Anne Hathaway's Kym in Rachel Getting Married is one of the best characters in movies in the past ten years. Is Justine a self-destructive infant, or a heroic savant? Von Trier's wisdom seems to be that the two aren't mutually exclusive, and that when the shit hits the fan, it's the more cynical that can keep it together. I'm more than ready to believe this thesis, but Melancholia never really took the time to convince me. On the other hand, every bit of film containing his titular rogue planet Melancholia is haunting, beautiful, and conveys the emotional depth his characters don't. I loved the film for it's ideas before I had to sit through it's characters for 2 and 1/2 hours.

I was really expecting at least one of these films to rock my world. Perhaps if one film had Malick's family and Von Trier's planet, 2011 would have had the masterpiece I'd hoped for.

In spite of their flaws, ambitious failures are still more interesting than a hedged bet. A few slightly less ambitious films, however, hit the nail right on the head and, more importantly, drove it all the way down.

First and foremost: Le Quattro Volte is a story told from the perspective of an old man, a goat, a tree, and a pile of ashes. Just how these four elements come together to tell the story of a sleepy mountain town is a wonder to behold. Much like the Hungarian masterpiece Hukkle the town goes about performing its well worn rituals while the vantage widens to a point where all is trivial, comic, and endearingly human.

The Future is the second feature from Miranda July. It's a film that will charm you in spite of whatever cynicism you may or may not have for it's twee director and her whimsical nature. Miranda July proves that she is not a fluke, that she is not going to bring the touchy-feely artsy shit down a notch, and that she is quite capable of expressing her real if peculiar genius through lovable fops and talking cats.

Shame is the follow up to Steve McQueen's powerful debut Hunger. And, like Hunger it earns it's stark moniker. It's a deeply felt story of troubled characters in a flawed world on a path to redemption. McQueen seems to be on track to rival Kieslowski for dark, gritty parables.

A few great adaptations: Jane Eyre, Norwegian Wood, and The Descendants all get a proper cinematic treatment. Some striking originals: Drive, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives , and Meeks Cutoff bring style and mood in spades. The Interrupters and The Bully Project are a couple of powerful docs that attempt to take on violence in middle America.

Perhaps I saw all the right movies last year, 2010 seemed to me like another watershed year like 1999. This year big audiences rightfully tried to embrace two films that were unabashedly artsy on the merits of previous directorial work, and in my opinion both films, while still definitely fine films worth seeing, missed their own mark. I hope audiences are willing to take those big risks in the year to come.

Mountain Goats - Lion's Teeth

2011-10-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

my submission for mountain goats sing The Mountain Goats

It's Hard to Find a Friend - Pedro the Lion

2011-10-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

Telephone Sketch @ the Comic Jam

2011-09-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

The rules of this game are: If you're looking at a drawing, turn the page and describe what you saw. If your looking at a written description, turn the page and draw what you read. Thanks be to all the folk who participated last night at the Homegrown Comic Jam, and stay tuned as I'll be attempting to fill the rest of the book at the next Con/Jam. Enjoy.

Wooden

2011-08-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

A new fairy-tale comic made for the Mixed Feelings zine issue 4.

Terry Gilliam's Do It Yourself Animation Show

2011-08-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Alfred Hitchcock- "Puns are the highest form of literature"

2011-07-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

Here Come the Pun

2011-07-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

After much negotiation, Jordan continues to ignore new nations borders.

Artifacts

2011-06-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

A new silent animation made for "Dream Sequences"--Part of the ongoing Dreamscapes exhibit at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.

Tree of Life - An interpretation.

2011-06-12T19:13:00.000-07:00

*Spoilers, obviously.

A lot has been said about the film's daring montage sequences. Many comparisons have been made to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 for the film's scope and ambition. Leaving the theater I was less impressed with the all the dazzling natural wonders and their breathtaking epic-ness than I was with the earnestness of the lives portrayed and the amazing performances all around.

At the center of the film is its working thesis. There are two ways of living. There is the way of nature, and the way of grace. Nature cares only for itself. It seeks pleasure, and in doing so it is a destructive force. Grace is meek. In the face of nature it takes insult and returns only composure.

In the film these two forces are personified by Jack's Father and Mother respectively. More importantly, though, they are embodied by Jack himself as he comes of age. In his innocence Jack is meek under the heavy thumb of his father. He offers him fear and respect in the face of impossible expectations and harsh reprimands. Jack cannot understand his father, only his permissive mother makes any sense to him.

But, as nature would have it, Jack cannot be innocent forever. As adolescence sets in Jack's grace fades in the wake of his nature. By the end of the film young Jack concedes that he is more like his father than his mother, implying his fall from the grace. His young brother, presumably the one who is dead at the film's outset, remains disarmingly gentle and compassionate last we see him.

Seen through the same thesis. The ambitious montage near the beginning of the film, which begins as Jack's grieving mother questions her faith in the wake of her sons death, takes the form of the nature which she cannot fully contain. She chafes under well meaning bromides as her friend attempts to help her cope, knowing the answer to her grief lies in some darker corner of herself. In this interpretation, the montage which is the films devisive centerpeice is both an earnest representation of the makings of life on earth, as well as an impressionistic representation of Jacks mother's emotional state, and by way of her, the viewer and anyone else faced with such a natural and unavoidable occurance.

In the film's Felliniesque resolution Jack imagines or perceives his mothers acceptance of his brother's death as she symbolically releases him. This final scene I believe attempts to finally unite the films two divergent approaches. If Mallick's stunning natural wonders are at first implied emotional states, here they are fully reconciled, as people from Jack's life(including his younger self) inhabit this seemingly imagined landscape where they make peace with their earthly struggles. This purely subjective setting, while it might be a place in the sky where Jack's mother says "That's where God lives", is most likely the workings of Jack's subconscious where the two forces that "wrestle inside", through his empathy, find some reconciliation as well.

Summing Up.

2011-04-07T12:34:00.001-07:00

Over the past 6 years I've been writing poems and making animations. Recently I've been compiling these efforts into a couple anthology projects.

Baby is Mama's Favorite Toy is a selection of short animations made by myself and my good friend and most frequent collaborator Matt Bryan.

The DVD contains over 2 hours of hand drawn and computer animation.

You can preview more animations and obtain this DVD at:

2847 Cherokee Street Saint Louis, MO
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Receipts is an anthology of poems written for the Internet. The thirty-two selected poems cherry picked from Myspace blogs and Facebook notes range from serious to comic, with many sitting comfortably on the fence.

Aug 28, 2006 10:35 AM

snake-oil placebos

the machinema hamlet

gave rise to the backlash

some 50 million luddites

with pitch fork and torch

they poked holes in the tires

of the toyota camry

and set fire to the wires

of the N64

but it was this day in history

in the year 2050

when a scientist finally discovered the soul

and he scribbled his notes

on the front of every newspaper

publication and tv station

in every home

and as it turned out

the souls only found

in a species of worms

found in beirut

and they extracted them out

and put them on ice

but when the worms died

the souls had died too

and 50 million viewers

reached for their electric blankets

as they listened to the statement

of the scientist that day

and 50 million cell phones

rang together in a prayer

but they weren’t sure if

the signal could be heard

that far away

Looks for these in the local section at:

6275 Delmar In the Loop St. Louis MO

Landscapes

2011-04-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

My long in the making concept album "5" is finally officially finished. It's not so great. So it goes. On the other hand, I made the following landscapes to accompany each song, and they came out pretty ok. Enjoy.

In the mouth

A friendly race

And there you were

The devil knows your name

Five

Bitter blood

Within an inch

Rules of the game

The way you came

original Big List splash page animation

2011-01-28T19:04:00.000-08:00

Click here for full page size

this pun's for you!

2011-01-15T15:25:00.000-08:00

100 posts! Don't act like you weren't counting.

Five little films that could...

2010-12-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

5 of the best films this year were serious ventures with big ambitions but slight budgets. Don't let these indie gems fall under your radar.

Dogtooth

Dogtooth takes a simple and elegant premise and makes it believable and disturbing-- Can mom and dad keep the influence of the great big scary world out of their children's reach? Maybe all it takes is a really tall fence and lots and lots of absurd and bewildering lies. What about when the children begin to come into adulthood? Oh, What tangled webs we weave.

Blue Valentine

Much like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blue Valentine takes a relationship's sweet beginnings and juxtaposes them with it's painful and awkward disillusion. More like A Woman Under the Influence, it removes all barriers to its realism and plays the notes as earnestly as possible. What it amounts to is a powerful warts and all emotional experience that nearly won it an NC-17 rating for an "emotionally intense sex scene."

Greenberg

Greenberg is smart, but not as smart as he thinks. Life continues to clue him into this and he keeps refusing to listen. He casts nervous aggression haphazardly in all directions scoring a few hits but mostly missing his aim. He's the defensive little egoist many of us know and many of us are. Director Noah Baumbach(Squid and the Whale) and Ben Stiller bring this little monster to life with uncanny precision.

Winter's Bone

In our little corner of the woods...perhaps a little further into the woods, a desperate young woman and her derelict uncle are forced to confront a cadre of grizzled drug runners in order to save the family homestead her meth cook father put up as bond before disappearing. Her heroic story is set against a stark Ozark winter that hits every dismal detail on it's rotten toothless head.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Fiercely Anonymous street artist Banksy plays puppeteer with a terrible little protege and perhaps the audience as well to ask a well crafted question about art and authenticity.

Of course there's also that insufferable big budget success from the Memento guy that despite it's being completely uninteresting and unimportant, never the less, has sparked more controversy and debate than we've seen sense the original Matrix. But, alas, my tastes are too refined. A great film cannot be properly enjoyed unless only a few people can enjoy it.

Point Omega - Don DeLillo

2010-12-11T20:40:00.000-08:00

Don DeLillo seems at his best dealing in bits of minutia, character revealed in the slightest gestures, every detail mined for its significance. It's little wonder then that his newest book Point Omega, sets itself the task of digesting a heady peice of contempory art, where mining for meaning is the name of the game.

The brief novel, singles out a recent video work, a real-life installation by a German video artist entitled 24-Hour Psycho, a slo-mo rendering of the Hitchcock classic with a 24-hour run time. The artwork becomes the jump off point for the story, weaves throughout it, illuminates the story's central themes, to the point that the novel seems as much a work of art appreciation as it does a narrative.

DeLillo's attentiveness to seemingly insignificant detail within his observations reliably cut straight to the heart of the matter. His characters are real and sympathietic, but I feel that however ideosyncratic, they are at bottom a means to a conceptual end. I don't mean this to say that somehow he is a lesser writer for it, rounding the edges off his characters to fit nicely in a conceptual framework. On the contrary, i think he's one of the few writers who can take a top-down idea and see it from the bottom up. In this way he shares a vein with his conceptual artist counterparts.

Having never viewed 24-Hour Psycho, I feel I can appreciate it anyhow. Much like his similar book The Body Artist, all the conceptualizing does take place within the confines of a traditional novel. There are descriptions of art and interpretations of art. But through the words and because of the words, there seems to be very little lost in translation, its almost as if you were experiencing the art first hand with all those fleeting associations, quiet reverences, and little epiphanies caught in their tracks and brought to bear on the page.

Oh i almost forgot...there is a story too! A filmmaker follows an old man(a powerful ex idea-man for the war in Iraq) to his vacation home in Arizona in hopes of making an experimental film about him. Heady Ideas about time and space are rendered realistically and convincingly, and a hunger for film and media criticism is handsomely rewarded. Point Omega is the work of an aging yet powerful writer who still has much to tell us.

laundering my music file for facebook

2010-11-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

Click me-->http://biglistofdeadpeople.fileave.com/novemberrain.mp3

Forty-four foreign favorites streaming on Netflix

2010-11-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

Here are 44 of of my favorite foreign flicks, that you could watch right now, given you subscribe. Netflix allows you to view the movies you've rated in a handy best-to-worst list, so i skimmed these foreign gems off the top (4 and 5 star ratings), and whittled them down to stream-able play now titles.

Sanjuro

You the Living

Amarcord

The Sea Inside

Delicatessen

8 1/2

Let the Right One In

Irreversible

My Life as a Dog

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Jules and Jim

4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Knife in the Water

Death of Mr. Lazarescu

Gomorrah

Satyricon

Hukkle

La Moustache

Watch the trailer here

Bicycle Thief

Nobody Knows

Rashomon

Code Unknown

Branded to Kill

Breathless

Three Extremes

Seventh Seal

Devil's Backbone

400 Blows

The Piano Teacher

The Orphanage

Solaris

Seven Samurai

Motorcycle Diaries

Battle of Algiers

Taxidermia

Svankmajer's Alice

Audition

Man Bites Dog

Hunger

49 Up

L'Avventurra

Distant

Thirst

Red Balloon

I like movies

2010-10-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

these ones are my favorites

Emo Moon

2010-09-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight the man in the moon looked especially forlorn. His face nearly half shrouded in darkness, I realized I was looking at the emo moon. Luckily, it's just a phase.

From the Vault

2010-08-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Fork + Ham from micheal mccubbins on Vimeo.

Long ago and far away beyond the days of YouTube, Matt and I decided that our pointless banter was too amusing to be kept between us, and set out to record a chunk of it. Using the most powerful, state of the art animation tool at our disposal--Microsoft Paint--we were able to create an entire world in which a shitty drawing of a fork and a shittier drawing of a ham stand in a white room and talk without moving too much.

Due to the sophisticated nature of animating the dialogue, YouTube was an unacceptable solution to carry our vision. But now it seems technology has finally caught up with us, and you may now enjoy our idle musings as they were originally intended.

More to come:

Episode 2 - Fork Vs. Ham

Episode 3 - To Fork From Ham

Episode 4 - Forks Over My Hammy

Some Ideas for Sitcoms

2010-07-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a few ideas I've had for TV sitcoms.

1. A brilliant but lonely genius with several degrees in robotics is disappointed by his intellectually inferior friends. He decides to use his knowledge of robotics to create a humanoid robot that will share his passion for the high and lofty. But, a freak accident creates EARL( Electronic Artificial Robot Lifeform) a hillbilly robot whose favorite pastimes include dog breeding and racism. This unlikely pair learn to live together, and our brilliant but lonely genius learns a thing or two about friendship.

TITLE: MAKING FRIENDS

2. Two best friends, fat Sam and skinny Bruce meet an early demise. When their monthly fishing trip goes awry Bruce and Sam's bones are picked clean by a school of hungry piranha. Strangely the two survive and come to live in a culturally diverse inner-city group home. Sam and bruce couldn't be any more different but their bone structures are identical. Hilarity ensues as the members of the group home mistake them for one another.

TITLE: SKELETWINS

3. Homicide detective Sean Simon's career is threatened when he is struck in the eye by a suspect's bullet. A chance encounter on a new assignment teaches sean that his injury has given him special psychic powers. Lifting his eye patch to expose his grizzly mangled eye hole, Sean witnesses the murder as if it were happening before his eye. Sean must now use his special ability to try and catch the cities killers before they can kill again. Sean can see with one bad eye what the rest of the force will never see with two.

TITLE: DEATH PERCEPTION

4. Two twin brothers separated at birth unwittingly become friends when they move down the street from one another.

Theme Song:

"Mama left them both to die when they were kids
Now they're all grown up, look what they did!
They started out in different cities, Somehow they both ended up in Cincinnati.
Now they're living on the very same street.
Who would really think that they would ever meet?
Brothers who see eachother every day
Now, lets hope they don't decide to be gay..........together
They're two of a kind,
they're there for eachother
they have the same mom,
but they don't know that they're brothers
Brothers Amigos they don't know that they're brothers

TITLE: BROTHERS AMIGOS

Excuses

2010-05-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

No posts in many moons. I've been diverting many of my creative juices into a project forthcoming...

with its very own Blog.

also...ive done some tagging on this here blog and instituted a handy list on the bottom left there.

Movie Hunt

2010-03-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

2010-03-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

MYTH:

FACT:

Hukkle

2010-02-26T15:00:00.001-08:00

I've been reading a lot of critics lists recently and feeling abit overwhelmed. I've spent much of the past ten years taking in foriegn films. I'd be confident in saying it's nearly half of what I've watched which is no small sum. Come to find out, according to most international critics, I've somehow missed nearly all the best foreign films of the decade. I've more or less decided to try and become aquainted with much of what I've missed, which include the entire careers of a girl named Claire Denis and a guy named Apichatpong Weerasethakul, by many critics measure the best it had to offer. The first of these favorited flicks I've been able to find is a beautiful Hungarian thing called Hukkle.

With an extremely slight narrative and hardly a word of dialogue, Hukkle comes off as more a poem than a drama. The filming takes place in a small hungarian farming town, and captures in many ways the sublime banality of its inhabitants and the local wild-life. The camera wanders from scene to scene through odd and suprising little vignettes, visual analogies, and unimportant coincidences. The closest comparison that comes to mind is Harmony Korine's Gummo. Both take a similar approach employing local non-professionals to go through familiar ritual as the camera catches as best in can its own unique perspective. In Gummo the community seems to be decaying, there seems to be something sinister in each dying tree. It's a distinctly American poem.

Hukkle on the other hand takes place in a far quianter setting. The little village seems as if it's been there for a thousand years and will stand a thousand more. Everything seems healthy and utopian in a way that only little european towns can. Except people are dying unnaturally. A(the) local police officer is trying hard to figure it out, but is left just as baffled and we are. Those few sentences pretty much make up the "plot" of the film.

Resting upon this slender frame are poetic moments of death and rebirth somehow given both the reverence of a nature documentary and sly elements of comedy. A cat which seems to be rolling about playfully in the grass is actually dying in fits. A pig with comically large testicles is walked across town to be bred with a sow, the owners looking on together fondly. A frog sneaking up on a creek side investigation is suddenly devoured by a catfish. And throughout it all an old man seems to have an extreme case of the hiccups.

You may follow along with the cop, the films only intellectual element, trying to solve the mystery at hand but the film doesn't cater to this impulse over any other. It's a relief to be offered such engaging audio/visual poems, and not be overburdened with the facts and the circumstances, or with one character's particular emotional point of view. The film knows how generous its being. In one interlude we observe an older woman watching a soap opera. The sounds of the program off camera fill the small room with melodramatic dialogue and a cheesy score. Your happy to be enjoying a film that leaves room for your own experiences and doesn't attempt to cheapen your emotions. In this way, it comes and goes with less form and ego having, like good poetry, said something less direct but more meaningful.

2010-02-20T08:07:00.000-08:00

MYTH:

FACT:

No abortions for sluts.

2010-01-12T21:01:00.000-08:00

There has been a bit of confusion out there as to whether or not fetuses are really people. Some people think that they don't have souls and so are more like a dog or a vacuum cleaner. Others think that maybe a fetus can be put to work, especially if it has children of its own.

I've put together a few facts that should finally clear things up.

This is a fetus at 18 weeks. As you can see, it has fingers, toes, ears, and skin. Looks very much like it could be a human.

At 22 weeks already we begin to see changes. Our fetus, who likes to be referred to as Arnie, has made some startling advances. The onset of pubic hair and a newfound curiosity in the opposite sex mark this delicate stage.

By week 25 more great milestones. The fetus must now learn to start taking responsibility and think about where it's going to be in another week or so. A pivotal time to be sure.

By week 28 the fetus really begins to express its individuality. Staking out its identity, the fetus begins to rebel against the provinciality of the womb, and longs to be free of all feeding sacs and amniotic fluids.

Coming into week thirty the fetus has likely been to Europe or the far east at least once. This new stage in his development marks a more open minded attitude. The fetus is likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol, and is often marked by many other factors including growing out a beard to try it out, a discreet tribal tattoo, a preference for khaki shorts and comfortable footwear, and a vague idea of the real truth behind the lies.

By week 33 the fetus has settled into more consistent facial hair styles. The fetus begins to thin a bit up top and likes to take it easy with a few close friends maybe if he has time after work.

In this final stage of development the fetus buys a sports car and tries to get back in touch with a previous stage in his development.

The fetus is then born and looks kind of like this. It acts real aloof and doesn't even mind pissing on itself. If it doesn't fuck things up, it may one day even be a person.

2010-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

mike was here

For the Records - Best of the Decade

2010-01-01T20:42:00.000-08:00

Here they are, in easy to consume reverse chronological list format, my 10 favorite albums of our bygone decade. Do scroll down into the archives to find individual love letters to each one.

Battles - Mirrored (2007)

Grizzly Bear - Yellow House (2006)

Mountain Goats - Get Lonely (2006)

Pelican - The Fire in our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw (2005)

Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly (2004)

TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (2004)

The Mars Volta - De Loused in the Comatorium (2003)

Pedro the Lion - Control (2002)

Dismemberment Plan - Change (2001)

Deftones - White Pony (2000)

Pelican - The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw

2010-01-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

It's hard to find much to relate to in metal music for me anymore. It turns out that the problem is mostly the vocals. They're usually screamed in a manner such that lyrics are rendered useless. One might argue that the vocals are more of an artistic touch meant to convey a feeling or emotion. Well ok, this can be made to work I'll agree but it becomes hard to beleive that this sort of anger can be sustained, in the singer, much less(more importantly) in the minds of listeners over any period of time(teenagers and psychopaths excluded). Screaming as an instrument does makes sense to me, very few bands though can pull this off.

Take the vocals away though and a few things happen. The focus is taken off the screamer and instrumentation must carry the song along. Without a vocalist the traditional song structures seem awkward and vestigial. With the music of midwestern post-metal group Pelican this emphasis is given to the change of movements and the building of melodies, harmonies, and volume. The songs swell and break almost organically.

Unlike say jazz though the effect isn't entirely avant garde. In the absence of lyrics to hold a theme or narrative, the songs retain a sort of cinematic quality. Bands like Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky have used this to great effect in actually scoring popular films. Yet without a proper narrative the compostions have to be interpreted though the scant few impressions given by song title, album title, and album art.

With Pelican's The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw the impressions are grand, naturalsitic, time spanning, and represent fantastic and unstoppable forces of nature. With this in mind the album can play as various narratives. To me, it's glaciers slowly carving out continents, it's great squids and white whales and mammals coming aground, it's the volcanic birth of islands and mountains. Its great and powerful forces of nature playing out thier ruthless and unpeopled stories.

Consider the difficulty of trying to express such a scope verbally, and you'll find that those who try often end up sounding over the top and goofy, where classical intrumentals have succeeded. Much like the classics it's not just size of your orchestra, but the grace and complexity with which you can use it. Fire in our Throats is Pelican's most melodic and complex composition to date, every bit as nuanced as the albums of thier post-rock bretheren mentioned above.

Nevermind those metal bands who strive for darkness of the industrial, the tribal, the fuedal, and the sacrelige, Pelican is capable of expressing the greatness and complexity of the natural and the primordial which is far more interesting.

TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

2009-12-30T16:07:00.001-08:00

I'm starting to hear talk of this past decade being officially the worst in recent memory. Of course we spent those 8 years gritting our teeth and losing ground politically, perhaps an ounce of forsight could have gone a long way, but I suppose people love to be wrong over and over again. Anywho there's something to be glad about and their name is TV on the Radio.

It was in these years that TVOTR grew from their humble beginnings, matured, outgrew the indie scene, and flourished in the mainstream. Their self released OK Calculator was a sprawling mess of weirdness and fun that did little more than establish theri affinity for rigid experimentation and hint toward their talents. With their Young Liars EP they showed they had grown and deserved their chance at the plate.

With their indie label debut Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, they emerged fully formed. It's major force is the beautiful harmony produced by singer Tunde Adebimpe's soulful and self assured poetics, and multi instrumentalist Kyp Malone's falsettos. It is the unfortunate circumstance of many great bands that they have front man/singer who cant carry a tune or write a lick. It's TVOTR's fortune that they are not only gifted musicians, artists, poets, technicians, and social commentators, but have commanding voices to boot. The touching and sincere barbershop ballad Ambulance illustrates best that for all the novelty of their experimental approach, they truly need nothing other than their voices to create captivating music.

What comes through on Desperate Youth is a 60s era idealism tempered by a dose of 90/00's realism. It's appropriatly hopeful and disappointed in turns, but never defeated. It's woozy and lovey, and then angry and sarcastic. It's summing up the century and saying lets move on. Their name if nothing else roots their interests in the lessons of the 20th century while transcending them.

It's this same idea which they expand upon with Return to Cookie Mountain, and Dear Science. Looking at the world with that same disappointment and stubborn optimism, and over the past decade gaining the hearts of countless fans and the accolades of some the nations most well known and revered critics and publications.

In my opinion they've been making the same album ever since Desperate Youth(2004), honing thier craft in the process and utilizing their new found resources and friends. It was Desperate Youth though that was their siren call, their mission statement, the prototype for their celebrated major label albums. While each new album has pulled me in held me there, I'm still most in love with those first songs that were so perfect and different and right already.

As the best of the decade lists roll I'm surprised and disappointed that I haven't seen them all over the place. They deserve a better tribute than I have done or could do here.

Puns for Christmas

2009-12-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

Pedro the Lion - Control

2009-12-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

It always baffles me to find out that a band or song writer I love is religious. It's not that I'm in awe that the same genius I recognize in them could believe in something I can no longer bring myself to humor, but more that such opposing views on what seems like such a basic and important question could find a complete reconciliation in my appreciation of their art.

Perhaps it's David Bazan's belief in the other side which keeps him afloat when uttering the simply soul crushing truths he's capable of in Control. Perhaps it's a religious beleif which draws him to such dire topics, or perhaps its the topics that drive him to religion. In any case there are no easy answers, no religious platitudes, no "good news", just people being all to human in an all too modern world.

The plight of man in the age of information and technology is a pet theme for Bazan. Is technology going to make us better people, a better country, will it even make us happier? With Control, Bazan expounds upon the themes of its predecesor EP Progress. Borrowing it's icy April 6, 2039 and renaming it Progress, he reworks it with an auto-tuned voice transmitted from the future selling furniture or perhaps just a prideful consumer showing off. It's hard to tell. The track drives the point home with "if you're lucky they'll turn out as good as you/you tell them that they're good kids but you know it isnt true/your father drank a little, you're on liver number two",drawing to mind that old quote which goes something like "I have no problem with technologies getting better and smarter, my only fear is that we will meet them half way". To make the point even clearer, the EP puts the barcode front and center of a steel grey cover.

In the bleak world of Control live a married couple who deal with the disillusion of their marriage in destructive and "Unoriginal" ways. Going from feigned "I love you's" at its start and ending with a EMT's feigned "buddy just calm down, you'll be just fine". An epilogue offers no answers, but won't admit meaninglessness, instead offering in a sober tone "wouldn't it be so wonderful/if everything was meaningless/but everything is so meaningful/and most everything turns to shit.", then in his characteristic irony sings "Rejoice" over a bed of angelic guitars.

Bazan has ever been a master of the cautionary tale, Control following in the narrative footsteps of the previous Winners Never Quit, another story of flawed individuals trying to deal with situations far over thier emotionaly immature heads. And, like many-a-band who try their hand at the concept album, came up with something more engaging the second time around.

Another important album from more overt Christians is mewithoutYou's Catch for Us the Foxes. These believers take an entirely different approach from Bazan, but still come up with something beautiful and meaningful. The music is vibrant and emotional owing much to 90s bands the likes of Fugazi and Sunny Day Real Estate. But, the lyrics are are what truly stand out. Feeling more orated than sung, they move along in a way that combines the immediacy of evangelism with the awe and wonder of transcendenatalist poetry.

If this sounds a bit paradoxical, it works all the better for thier themes which focus mainly on a sort of man vs himself struggle to keep the faith, recognize the truth, and maintain innocence. Aaron Weiss the bands vocalist carries the sort of neurotic energy of a Dostoyevski anti-hero, epitomising with his all to forward approach the unreliable narrator. But, if you can take his faith and joy at face value, then you will open yourself to some the best poetry and freshest imagery of the past decade.

Battles - Mirrored

2009-12-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

Remember when you were a kid and for the first time you went to Six flags, Disney Land, Universal Studios, or what have you. For the next few days you couldn't stop talking about HOW COOL it was, gushing about how it felt to be whipped around by a big metal contraption until you lose your shit and your adrenaline takes over. The ride stops and you step off grinning like an idiot.

Fun is the word, Battles Mirrored(2007) is fun, its a thrill, its an effect. Its 4 men in room with a few tons of electronics, mad scientists hammering away at this wondrous contraption, a sonic playground for your head. It's a century old promise finally fulfilled, a complete symbiosis of rock and electronics. Its pure bliss.

None of the lyrics are readily understood, and none need be, there's no narrative to tell, no emotion to convey, just a spectacle to behold. It's as close to avant-garde as anything I've ever heard. It's also Battles' first full length album.

It does owe a particular debt to the math rock tradition with its emphasis on angular melodies, electronic loops, odd time signatures, and lyrical ambiguity. Most importantly to math rock veterans Don Caballero.

In a move similar to the break of At the Drive In and the rise of the Mars Volta. Guitarist Ian Williams broke with Don Cab in 2000, and by taking on a more aggresively progressive and expiremental sound with Battles won wider appeal. The only album in the math rock catagory coming close to its sheer musical integrity is Don Cab's 2006 release World Class Listening Problem, that in a decade full to the brim with great math releases.

Mirrored's greatest success and largest leap from the genre is its grasp of the electronic. Keyboards are used to great effect, guitars processed, tweeked, and tapped to produce intresting new tones, and vocals bent to absurd and comic pitches. When going at 150 beats per minute its complete sensory overload, theres so much you've missed, you've no choice but to get back on and ride again. Conscious of this, mirrored is bookended. The albums opening and closing tracks Race In and Race Out respectively welcome you to show, and make a curtain call. A thoughtful and clever touch.

Big Joe

2009-12-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a little story bout a man I know. He's tough, he's mean, and his name is Big Joe.

thanks to Matt, Jeanie, Emily and Dan for the help.

Mountain Goats - Get Lonely

2009-12-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

I remember once hearing that the experience of loneliness makes everything around you seem sharper, more vivid, a sentiment I have to agree with. And, no album I've heard captures this feeling like Mountain Goats 2006 masterpiece Get Lonely.

The restlessness, the freedom, the desperation, the hunger of loneliness is in the albums every aspect. The production is crisp and dry, the guitar played softer than one would expect form from singer songwriter John Darnielle, the backing instrumentation slow and spare except when used to signal the narrators claustrophobia and paranoia, to capture the transient joy of a painful recollection, or to express a sort of forced, by your boot straps, type of motivation he only half believes in. The album FEELS lonely which may be the majority of its magic. But, the lyrics, oh man, the lyrics.

No one is around. Only traces of people. Faint screams from a high school football game, the noise of traffic, flood lights, convenient stores, dream people, anonymous crowds, ghosts of memories, strangers, threatening villagers, and most importantly, not the woman who has left him to his own devices.

"Sorrow is nothing but worn out joy"...the titular wisdom of the 2006 film Old Joy...which ive just watched. This is a particularly accurate sentiment for Get Lonely's narrator who spends half the album inhabiting the home they made, every detail aching with her absense. " The first time I made coffee for just myself, i made to much off it/but i drank it all just cuz you hate it when I let things go to waste/and i wandered around the house like a little boy lost at the mall/ and an astronaut could have seen the hunger in my eyes from space". He tries to escape into the world and find something to connect with "i will find and a crowd/ and blend in for a minute/and i will try to find/ a little comfort in it" but he only looks for her face in the crowd. He tries to clean house "whole boxes of memories left out at the curb/what are the years we gave eachother/ ever gonna be worth". Even his dreams give him fresh glimpses of the past to pine over. There is no escape, the pain in the joy, the joy in the pain.

The album creates a frosty landscape, vivid, unmistakably real and present. The imagery is cold and dry. One can almost see Darnielle's icy breath coming through the tracks. When the albums final track In Corolla comes around with the narrators metaphorical or perhaps actual sinking down into the warm comfort of a brackish lagoon and bringing the water into his lungs, it's a bitter sweet moment. "The sun was sinking into the atlantic/the last time that i turned my back on you/I tried to summon up a little prayer as i went under/it was the best that I could do/and i said Let them all fair better than your servant/the reeds all pricking at my skin/heres hoping they have better luck than I did down here with them/all that water rushing in."

Its also been suggested that in the lonlier periods of your life that music becomes more important. Perhaps its a needed distraction. Perhaps in more shapeless times one looks for signs of ones self, bits of wisdom, answers to questions that emerge only as feelings or hunches. Ones eyes are opened wide taking everything in, nothing is certain, everything is at once more threatening and potentially liberating. Discovering a new album, a new band, one can relate to in many ways can be like finding a new friend, slowly you learn more about them, it can be disappointing or it can reaffirm the bond. I've recently learned about one of his albums The Sunset Tree and I'm eager to put my brain's ear back into Darnielle and Co.'s capable hands.

Stray Dog

2009-11-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

Before Kurasawa made Yojimbo, before Seven Samurai, even before Roshoman, he made a nail biter of a detective story called Stray dog. It's the story of a young rookie detective who gets his gun stolen on a crowded bus. To his horror the gun ends up in the wrong hands and becomes the instrument of a string of crimes.

Detective Murakami, our protaginist, played by Kurosawa's golden child Toshiro Mifune goes on a rabid search for his lost pistol through post WWII Japan, combing the desperate and depraved ally ways in a city full of strays to get a lead on his sidearm. His ham fisted detective skills are presided over by veteran Detective Sato , Roshoman's Takashi Shimura who teaches Murakami the subtle ways of a successful gumshoe.

The dynamic between these 2 is very reminiescent of David Fincher's film Seven. In fact its impossible to watch Stray Dog without quite a few modern refereces coming to mind. And, we have the story of the cop who loses is gun in P.T. Anderson's Magnolia.

At the films center though is a story much like Scorsese's film The Departed. Murikami finds out hes on the hunt for a stray not unlike himself. Both hero and villian are just off the fronts of a lost war, and in a highly moral turn both of them have had thier knapsacks stolen along with all their money and belongings. On one side of the coin we have Murakami who joins the force, on the other Yusa who joins the underworld.

But, unlike Seven the film never goes for nihilism. Though they may be two sides of the same coin, Kurasawa makes it clear that the difference is not merely the chance of the toss. And, like The Departed Kurosawa uses every chance to compare the two, a comparison that isn't lost on the protagonist and his own nagging questions of accountability and the dark forces of desperation.

In contrast to many of Kurosawa's more popular later films, Stray Dog keeps the suspense wound tight making this 1940s film a breeze to watch even by todays standards. And like anything he's done, there's plenty of tough questions to chew on once the lights come back up.

Deftones - White Pony

2009-11-19T20:48:00.000-08:00

It was a good year to be into hard-rock and heavy metal. A young man mad at the world was hardly want of charismatic facial haired crooners capable of articulating his all too common frustrations and desires. I rang in the decade with a lot of aggressive music. Bands like Tool, System of a Down, and Rage Against the Machine were at the top of my playlist, not to mention a few other less flattering choices that force me to cringe in hindsight.

But, as the years have passed many of these albums have lost their edge. Or to put it better, I've lost whatever energy I was putting back into them. I can listen to them today and enjoy a rush of nostalgia, but there's no mystery left to tease out of them. The same music that once described my existance and punctuated my dreams, heard now seems strange and awkward. The music has stayed the same. It's me thats changed.

And it keeps happening. This isnt to say I'm an entirely different dude. I still enjoy much of the same music I did 10 years ago. What's even more suprising is that some of those same bands are still releasing music I like to this day, not many but if say Cake, Fiona Apple, or Ben Folds put out an album tomorrow, I would waste no time getting online and stealing it first chance I got.

The Deftones 2000 album White Pony was a big deal for me. I was a huge fan of their previous release Around the Fur with its irresistibly beautiful teenage anthem "Be Quiet and Drive". The ablum is pure emotion. It's all smoke and dreams and estrogen and shameless desire. It sighed and throbbed and screamed and captured my imagination big time. I wanted to play music just like that.

I jumped into White Pony head first as fans are known to do with follow up albums, with every faith it would be the next big thing in my life. And, as is not so often the case, it was. The first month or so of the albums release saw a different album than what you will find on the shelves now. In a marketing move by the bands label the radio/music video hit "Back To School" was grafted onto the beginning of the album. Sure its just one song, but in such important real-estate and in such discordance with the rest of the album. Imagine renting Princess Mononoke only to find that Disney's replaced the first 10 minutes with a Pixar short. If you have to listen to this version just skip past track one and hear the album as the band intended.

White Pony marks a few key contrasts to thier previous work. Most importantly it feels more focused. The production value for one is ratcheted up. The drums are crisp and clear, an improvement drummer Abe Cunningham makes obvious advantage of, creating beats which are more nuanced and inventive than previous efforts. On several tracks including "Rx Queen" and "Digital Bath" the verses are reduced to little more than drums and vocals creating a Portishead like sound and arriving at trip-hop from a completely different starting point.

Like portishead Chino Moreno carries his voice, not like a growling cookie cutter cookie monster, but with the smoky diva surliness of a Bjork or Billie Holiday. Where as in previous efforts recording Chino seems more like documenting a strange natural phenomenon, here his throaty androgenous voice is fully at his command. Mix that with the lyrical content which has shifted from that of an emotional impressionist toward tighter more narrative driven structures. In the process the deftones lost very little emotional immediacy and gained a great deal in control and craft.

Rythmicly guitarist Stephen Carpenter and bassist Chi Cheng become less riff driven. Instead the guitars create an ocean of sound which baths the album in warm tones. The result is a rich and dreamy bed of sound which makes the drums and vocals really pop.

Most Importantly though, as always, the deftones have created a work of real emotion which defies easy interpretation. After 10 years I am very much still in love with the album. Because a couple songs enjoyed favorible radio play and the very dated "back to school" was such a hit, the Deftones are inneveitably associated with the nu-metal and rap-rock ilk of their time, descriptors that most have been conditioned to avoid like the plague. Aside from living this awkward outsider existance among rock fans, the album is an odd duck among their own oeuvre, the band electing after White Pony, to revert in many ways back to its earlier sound. After having followed them to such heights I couldn't go back.

Hotel a Morel

2009-10-25T21:59:00.001-07:00

bang

'nother frame comic..
no real good way to scan it...
best attempt at reproducing it...
click for a closer look...
enjoy

2009-10-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

MYTH:

FACT:

Grizzly Bear - Yellow House

2009-10-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

I brought Grizzly Bear's Yellow house home from the library after a particualrly dreary day at work, layed my head back agaist the couch cushion, and prepared to give it a first listen. I had stumbled upon a video of them performing a cover of the old Crystals doo-wop hit "he hit me (and it felt like a kiss)" and subsequntly a couple a cappella tracks a la the brilliant french video series "Blogotheque" aka "The Take Away Shows". Duly impressed, I decided to give the full length a try.

Lying there in the semi-dark, I let the flighty a cappella swoons wash over me. Slowly and softly the ghostly vocals and dreamy instrumentation seeped in, and I was able to forget for some significant bit of time that I was lying there in the dark defeated by a shitty day at work.

I suppose that escapism was a feeling I hadn't felt in some time, and I was thankful to GB for weaving this dreamscape so that I might loose myself in it like a dorthy being pulled up and away from a black and white Kansas below. Later, nearing the release of thier follow-up Veckatamist, I read an article which sited one of them stating that they hoped someone might listen to one of their albums and be able to forget where they were. This, from a band who is particularly cafeful about stepping on the toes of interpreters with mission/artistic statements. Needless to say I was all the more impressed.

What makes Yellow House so exceptional is how it's found a way to seem both timeless and progressive. The way it seems to be invoking some lost art by incorporating traditional folk instruments and instrumentations into impossibly expansive layers, sometimes building to angelic crescendo, other times breaking out into a stomping and driving rhythmic force.

At times it feels as if you recognise their harmonies from the soundtrack of some golden era epic the titles softly disolving as the camera pans across a forgotten american landscape. A tall and simple church stands out boldy agaist the prairie, wandering through its halls, the echo of the choir envelopes you in an unsettling hymn for the missing.

The Knife, a song which has emmerged as the albums siren call, seems completely at home among the remainder of the album. Dispite its catchy motown aesthetic, it depicts a dark dirge of a story about a girl who just can't see her boy(the narrator) is a liar. Many of the songs bear the impression of being perhaps in that yellow house where the album was recorded: kicking up dust into the sun coming through the curtains, going to the window looking out at big blue sky, lyrics floating by like clouds, where you might impose some familiar form on them or just let them float in enriching the scene as a whole.

Like many of my favorite albums, its a carefully crafted experience. The band has an hour or so to tour you around and show you what they've found, and in Yellow House Grizzly Bear has collected some wonderful things.

Double Your Entendre

2009-10-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Careful now...each pic is doubly punishing

Mother Fucker Never Told a Lie

2009-09-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I came upon a poorly screen printed t-shirt at my local Good-Will thrift/retail/whatever store with what looked like a comic on it. The print consisted of about a hundred tiny panels, many of them indecipherable, which seemed to be telling a story about George Washington. I've kicked myself in the ass for months for not snatching it up only because it would have been too big for me to wear. The comic depicted our founding father reeking havoc and handing out asses wherever he went. Since that day I've been struggling to figure out exactly what I saw.

Today I happened upon someone's avatar in the A.V. Club comment threads and immediately recognized it as a drawing from the fabled t-shirt. I inquired as to its origin, and in little time was informed that it came from a comic/video created by Brad Neely a little googling and my months of anticipation were generously rewarded...

whites of your eyes, BITCH!

Irreversible

2009-09-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

Dan gave me a copy of Irreversible and asked me to watch it and let him know what I thought. He said "if you can make it though the first 15 minutes, then you should be able to make it through the rest." He also said that I would probably hate myself for watching it, but that I might want to watch it again.

So here I am having just watched it, and for the most part he was right. I do have a desire to watch it again(mostly to catch a few things I missed the first time) but don't know if I'm ever going to. It would be hard to overstate the violent nature of Irreversible and aside from being hard to stomach emotionally the films merry-go-round aesthetic will have you running for the dramamine before you get past the title menu.

I'm generally pretty thick skinned when it comes to movie violence, I don't get offended too easily in fact I don't see much of a point to. Most movie violence can be chalked up to bad decision making on the part of the director, where graphic violence is a stand-in for content and craft, where the ability to make people squirm turns a b-movie hack into a member of the avant garde, this movie might easily be thrown into that pile were it not for a few saving graces.

Its not the first movie to play its scenes in reverse order. Everyone going into this movie will be familiar with Memento and its effectiveness in toying with the narrative to achieve something greater than the sum (or difference) of its parts. Irreversible plays a similar game but goes much darker than Memento's small town noir and sinks you right out of the gates into the filthiest pits of city's bowels(at a gay night club called "rectum" no less) the camera swirling around as if hung by a chain.

There will be spoilers ahead so, if you plan on watching it and you can find it, stop reading here, and make sure no women, children, small animals, or the elderly are around.

Irreversible's achievement is not in that it shows some sort of brutal uncensored violence, a man getting his head smashed in by a fire extinguisher, or a rape scene which lasts a good 8-10 minutes. Though these scenes work toward the movie's overall effect which is a sort of inverted tragic levity that makes it's subjects senslessly violent story all the more tragic for it's sequencing. It does this I think by offering the story in a way which forces the viewer to consider the plot a little harder, where we might more easily block ourselves from the violence were it edited more traditionally or chronologically, here the bath water is drained deliberately to reveal the drowned baby if you will.

With each scene the colors get brighter, the contrast is softened, and most importantly the camera gets more grounded and steady. Indeed those first 15-30 are pretty hard to watch in fact all we really get to see are colors and textures of a gritty euro-trash red light district the camera occasionally panning to reveal a harshly lit glimpse of violent sex as the character searches the corridors of "rectum" to find the man responsible for putting his girlfriend in a coma.

The first half unvenges? us back to the the rape/beating and it is this scene where we see the victim for the first time aside from a bloody mess we see being hoisted into an ambulance a scene or 2 earlier. Nothing that might take place in the second half could redeem what happens to her. There are moments in this scene where I found myself covering my mouth in disgust/shock one especially heart breaking moment when we see a figure enter the underpass where she is being raped and surveys the scene from a distance and promptly decides to ignore it and go back the way he came unnoticed.

Now that we got all that messy business out of the way we can get down to meeting our characters which are a young couple and their good friend who has come to visit them. The friend is the woman's ex-lover which might make for a some touchy dialogue were this not a story set in modern France where people are above getting upset by all that. The dialogue in this second half is another gem which redeems the film from just being shock fodder.

The story winds itself back up until we're in the room of the 2 lovers naked, gratified, just waking up, exchanging playful affections all is fuzy, warm, safe, and diffused, the characters are likable enough that you really don't need what seems like a tacked on bit about the girl potentially being pregnant. The camera pans out the windows and it's blue skies and infinite possibilities. A final shot shows our girl reading a book on blanket in the park as sunbathers and children enjoy the beautiful day, save for one last bit where the screen flickers and buzzes a bit to evoke the films violent beginning.

Played in chronological order it wouldn't be the same movie at all, and while the story isn't quite as nuanced as Memento, i think it deserves its own special place into the world of non-traditional narratives. While its reverse approach might originally be merely stylistic in nature it does achieve something original and thought provoking.

Once the senseless violence of the world swallows you up there's little left but to be shot out the other side bearing hardly a resemblance to the ripe fruit you may have been going in. A process which is Irreversible.

Summer comes before the Fall

2009-09-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

I rarely read any novel more than once,

The Fall is the one of a few exceptions, and I've read it more than any other.

I've been working on this puppy since last fall,

enjoy

Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly

2009-09-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

In the last post I alluded to "comfort music" and I cant imagine that term needs much more explanation. Like a warm blanket you can wrap yourself up in it and let it coo you to sleep. I'd say that we're living in a generation defined by the idea, but it seems pointless to pick on emo when as long as music has been around we've been pouring our frustrations into it.

The only difference Is that as the entry level age for society endorsed romance drops you don't have to be an old blues-man to howl away the tears and testosterone. Self-pity has always been around in music. The idea that because of an explosion in technology is lowering the bar for the theatrical moping and catchy histrionics we should lay the bill at the door of self-pity and shoe-gazing is a little off aim.

The unspoken rule is that as adults were expect to leave all this comfort music behind and start taking a more positive pro active look at what were listening to. I think one of the unique burdens/choices that recent generations have had to deal with within a culture of constant noise is to consider what they idly end up ingesting and just how it effects their decision making processes. Each generation is expected to be able to dissect manipulation at a younger and younger age. Its little wonder why we look back at what we were doing just years ago with a tall order of condiscension and nostalgia.

Without straying further into rant territory, i'll get back on the point which is that as time wears on the wheat is separated from the chaff and what makes real artistic progress makes the trip to new generations like a little box of love letters we couldn't possibly throw away while lazy and unoriginal emoting gets left in the rear-view looking like Boy George's hat. No finer example than the recent success and influence of the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album-- essentially an emo album-- embraced on all sides.

The cruel hand of reason is unforgiving. I'm sort of afraid to say too much about Misery, or even find out what I really think about it taken apart and looked at under glass. The reason is that I still rely on this album as comfort music. It has a very pragmatic use, regardless of whatever intrinsic musical or cultural value it possesses. The conventional wisdom is that any album worth its salt would survive and be enhanced by such a dissection, still I cringe at the thought of touching this butterfly for fear that I ruin its beautiful wings.

This albums strain may be of a particular genus within comfort albums: "break-up albums". Singing duties for each track are traded off by lead vocalist Kazu Makino and multi-instrumentalist Amedeo Pace(half of "the twins" BR's identical twin brothers). The affect is as if the two were writing dear john letters back and forth. The musical ground they lay for this modern opera is a dense tapestry of synth and strings that fuse art-rock, pop, and classical chamber music pushing the despair to brand new/very old heights.

You might remember the scene in Bill and Ted where Mozart having been brought to the present chances upon a modern keyboard at the mall and proceeds to melt everyone's faces Victorian style. Given enough time he may have produced something close to Misery's baroque aesthetic.

Its hard to say much about the albums content that can't be felt. Makino's accent makes Bjork seem Middle-American by comparison and every song is as desperate as Vespertine's "Pagan Poetry". Pace's tone is equally hopeless. Together they capture the frustration of the too-needy-to-go...to self-absorbed-to-stay pain of a relationship gone sour.

This alternating of tracks eventually culminates into a frustrated and lonely 6 minute duet. Then with the opening chords of the albums last song "Equus" its as if the dark sky opens and beam of light falls upon the one or two trees which survived the fire. The song compares its narrator to a horse rider and her companion to a horse, and finds its inspiration in part from an accident involving Makino being seriously injured after being trampled by a horse. The production is a bright piece of pop which couldn't possibly serve as a happy ending, but makes sure to end the album at least ambiguously.

In lieu of actually studying the album any further:
Here's a list of 10 other great comfort/break up albums to sink down into:

The Cure - Blood Flowers
Fionna Apple - When the Pawn
Metal Hearts - Socialize
Cursive - Domestica
Elliot Smith - XO
Damein Rice - 9
Circa Survive - Juturna
Veda - The Weight of an Empty Room
Sunny Day Real Estate -Diary
Portishead -Dummy

Of course preference will change from person, what is one man's sympathetic masterpiece is another's whiny cringe machine.

There's always a rock musician who knows your pain. Give up. Tune in. Lay down. And let the man with the guitar and the woman with the microphone make it all better.

Dust vs. Diamonds:

2009-09-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

next week Kanye Twitty vs. Eagle Eye Chesney?

Dismemberment Plan - Change

2009-08-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

If De-loused is shrouded in obscurity, mystery, and mythology, then Dismemberment Plan's 2001 Album Change is at the other end of the poetic spectrum. The defining feel of the album for me is one of clarity.

The albums cover suggests it's nature pretty succinctly. We have the idea of change in the lower left, framed by a vast blue sky which leaves room any number of possiblities. It hints at what the lyrics make plain, it is time for airing our some demons, cleaning out the closets, and getting rid of some baggage. It makes for great road music.

The tone of the album is a two part mix that works perfectly to capture the feeling of starting afresh. The past is all there in all its mire and angst, you wouldnt know it at first but you're in for a lyrically dark album, singer Travis Morrison puts all the weird shit on his mind right there onto the track, and he does it with great poetic skill. It sounds like something out of Dave Eggars , its dark and heavy, buts its just quirky and fresh enough not to embarass itself too much with melodrama. Which brings me to the second part of the trick which is the rest of D Plan's musically optimistic tone. There's so much energy there musicly that you're convinced that the narrator is going to make it out alive and all the better for having confronted his demons. I use "narrator" because as tangible and many of the songs feel they are mostly fiction or at least offered from a perspective other than the singer's.

The album starts out with a sort of introduction: Theres no heaven and there's no hell/no limbo inbetween/i think its all a lie/ just a white light out to velvet black/then back to neutral grey/thats all when we die. It then comes back to say don't be fooled by my realistic take on the afterlife, I'm actaully fairly sentimental, "but you can bet I'll keep it real."

Starting with the second song The Face of The Earth we get a couple doses of brilliant little every-day vignettes which use what seem like insignificant details to capture the core feeling of each event: as kisses go it wasn't anything out of the ordinary/the alkaline lips/ her fingers hooked around by belt/she had to go/ she took a step back in and then she started to smile/ a heard a funny sound/ and everything seemed to shift.

The albums 4th track Pay for the Piano is a call to arms in the vein of Ted Leo's Shake the Sheets, another album that nearly made the list. And, while I have a chance I want to pay tribute to a couple others you wont be seeing. First Maratime's We the Vehicles which features D plan alumnus Eric Axelson which plays to me like a Change-lite. It's beautful, clean, and focused but missing the raw fire that puts Change over the top. Also, Mountain Goats Babylon Springs EP, puts off a similar vibe. But, well be seeing more of them soon.

Starting with the 5th track we get three songs of hard-core self-searching and bitter depression, sort of the existential core of the album. This trifecta by turns bring out some of the best emoting the album has to offer, best exemplified by the explosive Secret Curse which ticks like a time-bomb through the verses: secret curse/unwashable stain/ugly when bold/boring when plain/stricken with pleasure and taken with pain/ I'm nervous and lost and I cannot refrain, and then completely freaks out and fluxes as Morrison howls "IM SORRY!" over the chorus.

Next up Following Through rolls around and the spell is broken. The narrator cuts his losses and moves on with a statement of autonomy and freedom. Then comes the albums 2 song hit parade Time Bomb and Other Side.

Time Bomb is what got me into the album in the first place. The hooky verse, easy emotion, and focused narrative are the most accessible minutes of the album. I kept going back to D Plan's(or simply "The Plan" as many fans prefer to call them) web page to listen to the mp3 on repeat, to hear it build and get bigger every 30 seconds and let the self-pity wash over me like a thousand comforting hands.

Man am I a sucker for some self-pitying. Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, was another front runner for this list , and his side project Deciperacidos too. This isn't to say I'll be leaving the exquisite pleasures of comfort music off the list entirely, its just too rewarding to sink your sadness down into a bath of lush violins and minor guitar chords. I dont think I'll ever get over it.

The Otherside is a much more sofisticated attempt which basicly makes the statement that yes, relationships with people can be hard work and we are going to hate eachother some of the time, we're going to doubt eachother, and be confused about what exactly it was we wanted in the first place. But, if we can keep from copping out we might be redeamed and reaffirmed just around the corner. You get the feeling that the otherside is the albums central statement or lesson learned. The music is tight and fast every bit as sofisticated as the lyrics. It reenforces the albums feel of accountability and honesty. Good luck finding a handful of albums in the history of rock music that can do this with any sort of success, or for that matter even try.

The album ends with the bouncy Ellen and Ben the story of a doomed relationship as told by an embittered witness. It gives a sense of being above and beyond and past and condescending that makes a great sort of bookend.

Don't expect a song by song for any of the remaining posts.

St. Louis locals So Many Dynamos have been trying for years to get the word out about The Plan and this was my introduction. I still feel like I'm in on some great secret that few people really know about. I just as easily could have never found this album which is what makes the experience all the more enamouring . You might have noticed I've given very little past or future in which to place the album, and thats basicly how I view it; just a great peice of humanity that needs little context in order to be appreciated.

Comedy

2009-08-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

Matt posted his mini-comic adaptation of a short story I wrote some years ago.
Check it out over on his page.

Here's the short with all spelling and punctuation errors in tact,
written in all the subtlety and elegance of second person...

Wake up. Your eyes open, and through the sleepy haze and sideways beems of light that irritate and force your eyelids to shut back, you see a soft smear of red. You close them back momentarily and feel the tears well up in the sides of your eyes. You blink once, then twice, and then look at the ground as you try and open them again. The ground below you is cement. Its smooth cement and your black shoes with thier hard black soles make a tapping sound as your foot taps nervously.

You follow your shoes up to your pants. Your pants, black also, the material is soft and flowing yet heavy, all the way up to your waist. Someone walks by. "Good luck", they offer, and they slap your back through a dark blue jacket, through a stark white, pressed shirt. You turn your head to meat them. Theyve turned their head and theyre walking away with a clip board in their hand, checking off a list.

On the other side of soft smear of red you hear the murmuring of a voice, loud, yet full of bass and hard to understand, followed by a chorus of laughter and then clapping. On a table beside you, you see a nearly full bottle of water. You grab it, quicly remove and drop the lid, and drink the whole bottle in a few quick gulps. You begin to look around for someone else. Noone is around you so you walk closer to the soft red curtain and pear around it. After your eyes adjust to the bright light, you see a man wearing exactly what your wearing, at a microphone, making hand gestures, he catches you out of the corner of his eyes as you lean out further to see the enourmous audience that waits on each word. He quickly looks back to the audience as you run briskly backwards strait into a young girl and nearly knock her off of her feet.

"hi", you say, "where am i?"

She hesitates and then laughs with all her lungs "Save it for the show" she says

You look at her, squint your eyes slightly, and bring your brow way down, you gesture back at the red curtain "wait, you mean, i have to go out there?"

She once again laughs up internal organs and offers up a "you're better than ive heard, i gotta go, Good luck again"

The murmuring voice on the other side of the curtain crescendos and breaks off. The laughs are cut short by more clapping and applause that last longer this time. Through the curtain comes a beam of light that hits the floor in a semi circle. With the beam comes a man.

"hey", there you are, "i got em warmed up for ya"

He grabs a towel on a nearby table and wipes off his face, the girl breezes by you and out beyond the red curtain. You can hear her voice in the murmur of the PA system. The man dressed like you sits with relief into a chiar next to the table. "tag" he says "your it"

Behind the red curtain the murmer reaches a slow down pace and she pronounces with a sing song finale voice in four long sylables, someones name.

The man in the chair looks at you, he stares you right in the eyes.

he laughs "now you can go"

You walk slowly forward toward the curtain , the girl rushes past you "get out there" she says half serious.

You push past the curtain, the spotlight hits you unexpectedly almost shoving you back out. You squint against it and then push forward again in a straight line to the microphone at the middle of the stage.

You grab the microphone it makes a loud noise as you pull it "hi" you offer "i dont know what im doing here"

The crowd roars with laughter

--------------------------------------------

Reading over it again, it's kinda like a weird episode of Quantum Leap.
Kudos to Matt for finding a better tone in which to tell it.

Too Many Lions

2009-08-21T00:04:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering, this is an actual book. As you may have gathered its the story of an alligator who hungers for the flesh of a nubile human. The alligator persists in his hunger and nearly claims his prey. The book ends with the hopeful thought that if he can get big enough, someday this dream will be a reality.

In the spirit of this book. I present the books publishers, and you with the following story i've written and illustrated entitled "There's too many lions at the mother fucking zoo!"

The Mars Volta - De-loused in the Comatorium

2009-08-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

So to begin the list, which is layed out in no particular order of importance, I want to start with The Mars Volta's 2003 full length debut De-loused in the the Comatorium.

First I'm going to attempt to save this damsel in distress from the bitter claws of the too-self-conscious breed of indie music reviewers, then I want to get on to some real cannonizing.

Critics of the Album site a few key aversions:

1. The ablum has zero filter for modesty or scale.

2. The lyrics are self-gratifying gibberish.

3. Toooo jammy...please play the 5 chords i know!

I want to point out that the first 2 statements are the albums strengths and are mistaken as its weaknesses, and that the third, if you give the album any sort of honest listen, is just lazy.

I'll be the first person to admit that after having listened to this album at least 100 times I have very little idea what the proported "story" is actaully about, nor does it matter. If you want to judge it on those terms thats fine but your missing the point. Better to look at Deloused as a work of inspired surrealism.

The album fades in with an angular back and forth guitar time-keeper which mimes the sound of sirens while washes of synth and guitar swells fade in and out like electric medical equipment. The first set of lyrics paint a pessimistic picture of a hospital ward and the frustration builds in staccoto guitar and drum blasts until the album begins proper with the forlorn narrator screaming: Now I'm Lost! as the music erupts around him like satan's own salsa freak-out turned up to a hellish 150 BPM.

It's safe to say I was irrevoacably taken at this point. Everything that Cedric Bixler and Omar Lopez were doing right with At-the-drive-in's Relationship of Command they were now furthering with De-loused. Relationship's raw poetics, fierce urgency, and brazen experimentalism were all present with an injection of latin rhythm and operatic vocals.

ATDI's main reason for dissolving was that the afore meantioned beleived that thier trademark brand of post-punk just wasn't giving enough reign to thier predoliction for artisic expansion. And so, ATDI dissolved forming The Mars Volta, but also Sparta, who did a fine job of keeping up the ghost of many of ATDI's best qualities for about an album and a half.

If you take The Mars Volta's narrative bait, which isn't really necessary to enjoy the album, our narrator is a man trapped in his own head. Much like the protagonist in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly but without the hopefull tone. He is a man stuck in dreams, a place where emotions take free reign, and connections between dispareate elements are barely traceable but often rewarding. In this context ,you might begin to get a picture of how I digest this album and why I keep going back to it.

And, cinema is really where the best comparisons lie. For me, one of the closest comparisons is Fellini's Satyricon. As Fellini's camera pans past, deformed figures stare with a mixture of fear, confusion, disgust, or apathy framed by a crumbling and cascading architecture. Voices fade in and out confessing thier dark desires. Ancient mythology is vulgarly evoked. The effect is unsettling. As viewer I'm left with memorable images that have definate, yet understated connections, like waking dreams. The Volta could likely be better appreciated in comparison to other Latin-American surrealists, yet I lack the experience to conjure up anything more than a few Garcia-Marquez shorts and Frida Kahlu paintings.

But back to the point, TMV like surrealist cinema treat their albums as high art. One example of this comes in the form of another Volta trait that critics can't stomach and that's the large expanses of quiet electonics and down tempos which frame thier frantic episodes. In the art world you might call this "negative space" a concept which is used to enrich a compostion by bringing aspects to the forefront. With deloused TMVs use of negative space is very obvious. What many critics denounce as gratuitous noodling, is to me a perfectly paced and lushly produced frame for their explosions of imagery.

De-loused ...Produced by Rick Rubin

Rubin's Vase. (coincidence?)

Lopez' guitar is capable of carrying the melody of any song on deloused and does on a few occasions, yet when its not, and hes teaming up with drummer John Theodore to create a song's rhythmic soundscape the effect is tight and hermetic. While Lopez is highly capable of noodling around he is kind enough to save it for the live show and his solo project.

Most of the highest points on De-loused, an album filled with otherworldly "moments", though are when the rhythmic engine churns while Bixler provides the self-assured melodies. His voice and range are capable of feats which few men can boast.. His melodies feel at the same time ancient and futuristic, and they project the lyrics with confidence that suggests they are somewhere inscribed in granite. His lyrics are full of creative juxtaposions, what he leaves behind in consistancy he more than makes up for in shear freshness of image. Yet an emotional strain of confusion, forlorness, and uncertainty rings throughout De-loused, which really pulls it together thematically and makes for an equally exultant and cathartic listen.

It's not meant to be easy to intellectualize a Mars Volta album. I'm tempted to say that some of the "inspirations" they offer like finding a lost diary or an old quija board seem more like interesting bait for concept junkies like myself, which may never flesh out a narrative, but perhaps provide some sort of intellectual framework for those who need a conveniant mode of peristalsis. Other times they seem like an elaborate joke played by the gods on our tiny little hob-goblin minds.

If this Interpretation of the album is true, and it seems pretty legit, it makes classic-rock geek gods RUSH look like Andrew W.K. on a particularly lazy day.

In my estimation Bixler and Lopez have made 6 great albums, everything from ATDI's In-Casino-Out on up to TMV's Amputecture. They took a necessary leap after Relationship of Command(an album which would likly be on this list were it not overshadowed by De-loused)...and made a work of art which exceeds the camp of their moniker and gives the over used modifiers "mind-bending" or "epic" a comfortable place to hang out and be sincere.

PS.

Today I listened to the album again focusing on the lyrics with a little help from LyricWiki.org and the albums own Wiki page (which has a link to a story book which came with a special edition release) in order to make some sort of sense of the story.

Starting with the basic premis which is: Friend of the band Julio Venegas(mexican surrealist painter) overdoses on rat poison, falls into a coma, and does battle with his subconcious, only to wake up from the coma a week later and jump off an overpass into traffic a la Kafka's The Judgement.

The lyrics are uber-opaque, but I was able to get a sense of the arc of the story which is so well layed out in the above interpretation that I've decided not to do my own inferior version.

If you already love the album then I hope I've done it some justice. If you don't already love it, then that means you've never heard it. In which case, get the album, kick everyone out of the house, get in your socks on the linoleum, put the good china in the cabinet, and get your air drumsticks ready, I'll see you in a week.

PUNishment

2009-08-15T22:43:00.001-07:00

For the Records

2009-08-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the coming months I'm going to take it upon myself to write lengthy reviews/love letters to ten albums. These albums will have been released at any time over the past ten years and will have captured my ear and my heart in some great big ugly way. Indeed this is my top 10 of the 2000s list.

Expect more enthusiasm and less academia.

You've probably already heard them all at least once anyhow, but its safe to say I've heard them all at least 30 times perhaps more. These were the years I truly fell in love with "the album" as the indisputable vessel/form of musical expression. I remember precious few song names from many of these albums, yet merely the utterance of the albums moniker will likely convey within me a complex stream of emotions and memories. This is the sort of poetic that I'm hoping to capture. And to help me capture it, I'm going to attempt to immerse myself into each of them for a good week or so till I'm filthy with their scent.

See you in a week or so.

Suicide Note

2009-08-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

Life is an endless parade of death and disillusionment, marching thoughtlessly forward as the path of incredulous hope is crushed with ease under the heel of it's careless sole. At approximately 1 AM this morning I swallowed what remained of a bottle of tums and washed them down with a mouthful of Alberto’s VO5. As the calcium courses through my veins aided by the volumizing proteins of my milky death rinse, I come here in my final anguished moments to post my last grievances with this brutish world.

What a cruel ride it’s been. To everyone along the way who has tried in every way to make it as soul-crushing and horrible as possible, I tip my hat, I couldn’t have done it without you. But, the real credit goes to the man who’s been with me since the beginning. He’s an all-consuming voice in my head and he calls himself Dr. Safety.

As life has pulled my fragile frame through the proverbial mangler, Dr. Safety has been at my side assuring me that the pointless pain of living can be forever soothed by what he refers to as "the mortal therapy." As the brittle walls of my shaky existence come crashing down around me in a hell storm of torturous reckoning, I leave my case in the hands of the good doctor and in the faith of his velvet cure.

To those left behind, I assure you now that you’ve played no small part in my untimely voyage to the infinite. Each of you like the many stones of a great wall has played some role in the aggregate of my shattered being. Reckless guardian, reviled lover, off-handed heckler, this note is for you. I have forgotten nothing, and the pain of each encounter resonates within me at a deafening frequency which grows louder each sunless day.

Why now then? You might be asking yourselves. Well the answer to that is simple.

As the autumn of my youth approaches, my pride has contracted me to build my modest home on the banks of a mighty torrent. In the throws of a raging tempest my foundation was unearthed and my life’s work was carried out to the vast sea where the ashes of my indentity litter the ocean floor. Looking back perhaps I shouldn’t have played that many PowerBall tickets.

And now with my chalky death soon approaching,

Goodbye cruel world, Good morning Doctor

I regret everything,

asteroiDs ApoCOlypSE

2009-08-08T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hey, to the 3 dudes I know read this thing..I'll just refer to you by name...Hey Brian, Matt , and Brian....

I just finished reading this book...

...and i say, if you haven't read it yet, then by all means get to it.

Brian S. I'm sure you'd probably spot this cover art in a crowded room. And with this book the design and content, the form and function, are linked inseparably in a way I've not seen in a graphic novel.

The life of Asterios Polyp, an accomplished architect who's designs have won countless awards yet have never been built, is narrated by the voice of his unborn identical twin brother Ignazio. The story centers around a late-life-crisis which pits Polyp against a heart-breaking divorce, and a lightning fire which destroys his home and all its modern, angular furnishings.

Author David Mazzucchelli is a name I'm sure you're familiar with Matt, as he gets the illustrating credit for Frank Miller's Batman Year One. Mazzacchelli's characters are distinct and multi-dimensional in both personality and physical embodiment, and are, by way of his design, capable of both instant recognition and surprising depth. Their shapes, dimensions, font design, are all clues to their inner working and inherent conflict. Douche Brian, after having been overheard to say something to the effect of "I don't like modern design. I prefer more ornate shit." , were you a character in this book, you might find you self drawn in the labored style of a Victorian nobleman.

The story succeeds fantastically at illuminating one of arts great paradoxes...that is, of the false but apparently inevitable dichotomy of medium and message, and it does so in a way that never burdens the metaphor.

Now that I've written a post both totally informal and cringingly self-important I'm going to go ahead and say I've officially written a "blog". To my audience of 3 and my fictitious potential readership of millions, I now apologize for the disservice I've done you both.

Buttercup

2009-08-05T20:18:00.001-07:00

I found this photograph today of "Buttercup"

is it just me or doesn't buttercup have the distinct physiognomy of a bitter old racist?

PUNishment

2009-07-25T22:11:00.000-07:00

how you like them apples?

My life in cars.

2009-07-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

I owned my first car before I ever had my license. It was a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba centennial edition with a bronze coin on the fender to commemorate our nations independence. Ironic, considering the car is named for a Spanish town and whose television ad features Spaniard Ricardo Montalbon Talking about his “needs” in a car as if it were a loving wife or a seasoned hooker. It was bright hot yellow with a black vinyl landau top which featured 2 small side windows in the rear framed by ornate chrome branches. Dispite being the “small chrysler” as ads suggest this car was the biggest thing on the road A smooth ride to be sure with a big gas guzzling v8 engine with standard 8 track cassette player and Chronometer(read clock) in the black vinyl dash which smelled perpetually of armor-all and cigarette smoke.

I worked all summer when I was 15 and payed my dad 750 dollars for the car. From time to time I would sit in its huge soft Corenthian leather seats and imagine driving it around. Once I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to pull it out of the drive way and drive it a few hundred yards. I got it stuck in the ditch trying to pull it back into the driveway. I employed my friends and siblings to help me get it out before my dad got home from work. The car was broken down before my 16^th birthday. My dad felt bad that I never got to drive it and pitched in come the next summer when I bought the second vehicle I owned and never drove.

This second vehicle was a late eighties modal Nissan light duty pick up. It was silver and it was missing a gear. We planned to change out the transmission and convert it to an automatic. After several failed attempts to find the tranny, I eventually sold it to my uncle who wanted to fix it. I’m not sure that he ever got it running, but for the brief moment it was mine it sat back at the top of the yard where I could point it out to my friends as we pulled away on the school bus.

By the time I got around to buying my third vehicle I was graduating high school and just got my license. It was 650 dollars, it was a 1989 ford escort sedan, it was red, and it got about 30 miles to the gallon. It had no title, instead I was given a “bill of sale” written on wide ruled notebook paper. I drove this car for the better part of my 2 years at college. I lived off campus, about seventy miles off campus and drove it the 140 miles every weekday. Most teenagers have some sort of foolish brand loyalty, it usually comes from what their parents own or want to own, and in better cases from shoddy anecdotes. I'm not proud of it but at one point I owned a shirt which depicted Calvin(of Calvin and Hobbes) urinating mischeviously on Ford's logo. I think I won it or bought it at the county fair, but why I agreed with it is still unsure. The teenage mind is capable of grand leaps of logic. Yet if fords were said to be made cheaply, this car was no exception. It did last me 2 years, though, with the exception of 2 major repairs to the timing belt and transmission.

At some point I decided it was imperative to remove the ford emblems from the car. You see during many of my junior high and high school years I had been duped into a brand consciousness. As my family was dirt poor this meant buying second hand and discounted nike shoes, and buying brand apparel knock offs and flea markets. For a while I thought this bought me a little bit of normalcy and if I could make sure no stray cockroaches were in my backpack in the mornings and try hard not to spill any any kerosene on my shoes from the space heaters then all the other kids would think I was just like them. Eventually through the help of hard rock bands and outsider friends I became enlightened and made sure to cut any and all brand signifying tags off my clothes which lead naturally to pulling the little plastic brand logos off my little escort. In the absence of the brands I placed a couple hard rock bumper stickers on there and felt pretty good about myself.

By graduation my friends and I were planning a road trip to California, for one reason or another this was going to be done in my car. Driving to and from school along the highway I noticed dark grey European looking car with a high windshield and wipers on the headlights. It looked educated, stoic, visually economic, slightly eccentric, and dark. Everything I wanted to be. It was a 1992 Saab 900 sedan, automatic, the headlight wipers were long since busted and the seat warmers no longer worked but aside from a heater core it didn’t seem to need much else. It looked exotic, it smelled classy, it had a decent stereo. I payed the man 1200 for it and drove it home.

We packed the car and headed to Jeff City to pick up my girlfriend to head west. Her parents gave us a resounding NO, and we drove it back home and took her car to Chicago. Had we tried to take it out west, the alarm system which relied on a battery in the keychain would have stopped us in our tracks as it did when we returned. We found a way around the alarm system and hooked up a push button starter. The headliner fell down and I replaced it with a rage against the machine poster; the one with the black and white burning monk in front of the old 40s coupe. This car gave me all sorts of problems but was too beautiful to just let go of. This seemed to be my philosophy with a lot of things.

It used gallons of oil monthly but it moved me to St. Louis. Eventually the waning transmission gave out completely and it sat in my dads yard where several people inquired about it but no one really wanted it. Eventually my dad used it in a trade for a minivan.

My dad loaned me his huge-ass, 5 miles to the gallon, Ford Econoline van while I was looking for another car. A ride my friends would endearingly refer to as the “stalker van”. One friend said jokingly “ I bet that thing can stop on a dime”…”oh man” I told her “ it can stop on a whole bunch of dimes” Driving back to my dads a goose hit the windshield luckily it didn’t come all the way through.

Das had a friend who worked a car auction. At these places all you can do is get in and start the car, and put it in gear and sit there. There are no test drives. This friend could drive the cars around the lot though and said he would do this for me. I found a little grey Nissan Maxima that I liked. He drove it and it ran fine. I waited for the car to come down the line and called my bid as the jabbering auctioneer dribbled out 50s and 100s I was surrounded by shifty looking used car salesmen and probably bidding against the cars owner. Luckily he stopped bidding at 750 which is where I had planned to stop and the car was mine. I came to get the car the next day which is when I realized the car was very close to the one we tested but slightly different. As we pulled out the car shifted nicely into second and the topped out at about 40 mph without shifting into third. I got out of the car and cussed at it. There are no refunds at the car auction. I was stuck with this crap car and had to do something. What followed was one of the worst ordeals of my semi-adult life and after a couple months of skeezy junkyard owners, mistaken transmissions, and big favors the car was finally running properly. This 89 Nissan Maxima was made just at the point when cars started getting curvy as opposed to the boxy style of the 70s and 80s. I hated this car for what it represented. I didn’t even like the look of it. It was a v6 and I was now an environmentally conscience suburbanite. The radio was a joke but it was a workhorse and it lasted me a few years. It still ran when I gave it to dad about a year ago.

Which takes us to the 1989 Toyota Corolla I own now. In my opinion a beautifully simple car, great on gas mileage, relatively simple to repair, I wish I owned one of these cars for every color. I got it cheap from a friend because I had to replace a couple parts to get it running. I really like this car.

The transmission went out. I replaced it. Then, The engine went out. I replaced it. Now, and this has all happened in the course of 7 or 8 months, I’ve been struck by a careless driver who gave me bogus insurance Info and a phone number that doesn’t work. My brakes are out and my trunk and bumper are smashed in. I have liability only. On the phone my dad said “Maybe your not supposed to have this car” and I’m thinking maybe he’s right…but ill try and fix the brakes and see what I can do about the trunk but she’s starting to get loud and run funny again and I foresee that after not so long she’ll be put out to pasture as well.

These cars have problems sure. But does that mean that they don’t deserve love?

I’m tired of driving half dead cars until they fall over exhausted, I want to be able to keep one running for more than a couple years. Even if I could afford a newer car it wouldn’t be the same I’ve grown an appreciation for these old vintage clunkers, which still exist in spite of bad odds and numerous owners. I can’t help from getting a little romantic.

Barbecue for Breakfast

2009-07-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

With some people creativity is a spring which gushes forth from a rift in their very soul. With others its a slow steady work of diligence and industry. Yet with some it is a grasping, competitive affair which knows only deadlines and headcounts, a shameless plea for attention punctuated by an awkward throw from a wooden horse. Its the karaoke of art...and its my bread and butter...

i'm only half joking...

The following is a comic which was born out of such a womb...took on a bit of steam...and then hit the grass like a cold banana when the teat of attention suckled dry...go figure.

Anyhow it represents my first real attempt at comic strip...

Click the images to make them too large to read comfortably...

2009-06-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

MYTH:

FACT:

UP!.......series

2009-06-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've just finished watching Michael Apted's series of documentaries entitled The Up Series.
This ongoing series began in 1963 when a group of British 7-year-olds were interviewed on their opinions about love, money, education, and --probably most enlightening---their ambitions. The series featured children from diverse backgrounds, some coming from wealthy families and boarding schools, others from orphanages, or farming communities.

Apted has directed American documentaries and critically acclaimed films, most notably Coal Miners Daughter, Sissy Spacek's portrayal of Loretta Lynn growing up tough in Appalacia or Nell which starred Jodie Foster as a modern feminine version of Tarzan or Jungle Book's Mogli. Why I hadn't heard of this till just recently is beyond me, it's an Ebert top 10 and has apparently been mimicked in several other countries, including the US and was the subject of a Simpsons episode. I imagine the success of the newest pixar film will inadvertently lend it some light.

The idea sort of draws upon an old jesuit saying "give me a child until he is seven and will give you the man", which is sort of ambiguous but, what I think it was intended to mean is that looking at the factors of social class, personality, ambition of a seven year old certain predictions can be made about how they will grow up. Every seven years Apted seeks to find as many of the 14 original participants as possible and checks in on their current lives, ambitions, failures, struggles, achievements. What he achieves are several character studies in the broadest sense, 14 distinctly different biographies that are made even more interesting by the fact that his subjects lead more or less normal everyday lives.

Some of the kids change most drastically from 7 to 14 others from 14 to 21, others and perhaps the most interesting remain in a sort arrested development till well into their 30s. This was the case for one participant Neil who at 7 was intelligent, joyful, and some what naive when asked what he thought about colored people he responded that it was hard to imagine a "purple person with red eyes and yellow feet". He wanted--as many children with strong imaginations -- to be an astronaut. His plan b was to become a coach driver. After seven years there was already definite signs of disillusionment about him and his cheerful demeanor gave way to a more measured, realistic tone. By 21 he was homeless and angry. In his bitterness one could sense a sort of forlornness or existential dread, when coupled with his nervous instability it made him seem hopeless. Over the next 2 series living in extremely modest abodes, hitch-hiking all over Great Britain, and collecting social security his anger begins to give way to tolerance and he becomes more capable of stomaching society eventually moving back to London to pursue politics.

You get a sense with Neil that hes always struggling to bring the truth out, a trait by which in my opinion, he becomes the star of the show. Indeed, the whole cast seem to be collectively bad at self delusion and justifications and most of them allow the cameras back in every seven years. A few though don't which casts a sort of darkness upon their character, perhaps undeserved as they weren't fully capable of agreeing at 7 to do the show in the first place.

Though the show originally intended to make comparisons between classes, colors, and creeds, after the first 2 or 3 the tone becomes more personal than political and takes on a character that that the originators might not have imagined(Apted having been only a researcher, not director of the first installment). The basic questions don't change, class, money, love, work, dreams, but the subject in large part care very little about the politics and desire to talk more about personal goals achievements, children, marriage and so forth.

One conclusion that might be drawn from this, and one that probably my other favorite character Nick comes to at 42 is that the class barriers are so subtle and pervasive that as a fish in water, one cannot see them at work. This could be exemplified by the fact that the privileged seem to be thankful and dutiful, a bit close lipped, and in a couple cases absent altogether. The less fortunate in their turn seem to look at the world as though they were given ample option to do as they pleased and wouldn't want the burden of the privileged.

Nick ,perhaps the most successful and self-made of them all, knew from a very early age he wanted to move from his provincial setting and get on in the world as an important and useful mind. Each installment shows him further actualizing this dream. He moves to the United States in his twenties to pursue a career in teaching nuclear physics whether or not his distance from England harms or helps his opinion is tough to say.

Tony, one of the most interesting, is a hyperactive kid from the wrong side of the tracks who is adamant even at 7 that his dream is to be a jockey. He realizes this dream if only briefly and as it ends he wastes no time moving on to his next choice--cab driver. In one of the series best moments he is asked about dropping out of school...he explains that he only knows a few things "girls, dogs, horses,bets, cars, mom, dad, and love," he fires these out in rapid succession "that's all I care about, that's all I want to care about" simply and genuinely.

The rest of the characters are interesting in their own right, some more than others, but in the end all are indispensable. Watching the series no doubt induced serious self-reflection on my part as I imagine it would have a similar effect on all. In an age where reality television is king and where character driven dramas, no matter how unrealistic and mundane, seem to be as addicting as meth to urban 20-somethings, it baffles me how long this has remained under the collective radar. I still have yet to see the 49 installment and the 56 is set to come out in a couple years. While it may or may not be that genesis of reality television it was/is likely the zenith.

Additional Findings

2009-06-03T21:21:00.000-07:00

In addition to the findings of the last post, today I found the following in a book about musical instruments...

At first I was confused, as I ignored the representations of fixtures and furniture and assumed it was a top side view similar to an architectural blueprint. Upon further study though, it seems the "teloporter" a seemingly ordinary telephone booth is a secret entrance to a high-tech underground lab which has all modern emenities including its own restroom. The teloporter it seems either works by falling toward the floor of the lab aided by an electromagnetic field represent by the lines eminating from the platform which rests directly below it much like your ordinary elevator. Or perhaps more ambitiously, actually tel-o-ports and rematerializes below much like a star trek beam-in, in which case the placing of the fake booth(which may infact actaully send as recieve calls, one hopes this is the case in order to better camoflague its secret purpose)directly above the platform, is a mere coincidence.

In any case the author has provided us with a somewhat limited legend below the treatment, which serves to let us know there is a door to the bathroom as well as a cieling(which lends validity to the thoery that the teloporter drops, without it teloportors could see over the door and into the bathroom ruining the privacy of any mad scientist, henchman, lab assistant, or secret special agent defecting below.

Sadly though the author has misplaced his drawing and will most likley have to settle for throwing his/her self down the laundry chute onto a pile of broken chairs.

Finders Keepers

2009-06-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

Shuffling books at the library one finds all sorts of things... often items get used as bookmarks and then forgotten between pages, christmas cards, post cards, one book had a used condom wrapper inside...it was that second tier, slightly cheaper name worn by couples who shop for bulk not brand notoriety.

To some people a book drop looks a lot like a trash can. A used tampon applicator can end up resting gracefully atop a copy of the newest Fern Micheals romance novel. Seems it fell out of a plastic bag filled with soda cans and an empty box of nachos...sometimes a girl has to get crafty...

I can't tell if these are in ascending or descending order of importance.

Today I found something a bit more interesting

It seems at first to be an idle doodling or an experimental poem,
but a closer look reveals its ambition

Indeed it is a top secret project...classified level 5 type stuff
the delicate shading of the plug, the expensive resume paper
all hint that this will be something big...so long as it's creator has
internalized his/her patent pending suction/tension pulling mechanism
and can get their hands on a gigantic VHS tape.

If you've relieved yourself in my restroom and weren't keeping a watchful eye on your trajectory
then you may have seen my greatest find (pictured at the top).
I found it some years ago working at an antique mall.
Spraying down the men's room toilets with lysol at the end of the night. I found it folded up, resting atop the tiolet tank in one of the stalls.
It's am ink-jet reproduction of lopsided mams in bad light which someone must have found inspirational to say the least. Luckily I share their appreciation for fine things, and so I framed it in an ornate gold frame and it hangs proudly on my bathroom wall. If you ever go there you may find two handsome gentlemen of leisure with impecible taste...

And while were on the subject of all things lost and found. I found this book at the library last week...

It's a collected serial comic based loosely upon the diary of a high school sophomore in 1985 which was found on the floor of a gas station bathroom.

It is indeed awesome.

Its a time-capsule back to the days of bad hair and false hopes...
of course I mean high-school.

Tammy is the kinda girl that will show you nip for a dollar and then let you keep the dollar.
If you let her hang out with you she'll buy you chili cheese fries from sonic and wait patiently while you make out with your girlfriend. Is it possible that an older Tammy posed for the photo above? Perhaps in exchange for dinner at Chili's or a ride in a PT Cruiser? No, probably not dummy...i just need some sort of call-back so this post can end with a semi-conclusive and quasi-humorous aire.

o c t o m o o s e

2009-05-27T00:35:00.000-07:00

Canary in the Mineral Area

2009-05-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

The history of St. Louis is built on mounds. Thousands of burial mounds which have not survived modern earth movers littered the area, once giving St. Louis the nickname " Mound City". Many of these mounds are thought to have been built right around 1000 years ago by a network of native americans known as the the Hopewell Culture. Most notable of these are the Cahokia Mounds just east of St. Louis.

The largest Cahokia mound "Monk's Mound" stands 90 meters tall and and is the largest man made earthen mound found anywhere in North America. But, you already know this.

What you might not know about are a network of mounds about 70 miles south of St. Louis. These mounds, it has been fairly well documented, were built starting in the 1860s in southern Missouri towns such as Bonne Terre, Park Hills(Formerly Flat River), and Leadwood. These towns which are perhaps better known as the "Mineral Area" or the "Lead Belt" were once the site of the largest lead mining outfit in history. Lead ore(Galena) was mined from as much as 200 feet down in some places. Leaving vast underground caves, some of which are now tourist destinations, others far too volatile.

Only a small percentage of Gelena is profitible as lead or other metals such zinc or copper. The rest is a refuse known as "chat". Piles of of this white sandy gravel grew as the mines prospered in some places such as Flat Rivers "National Chat Dump" towering over the small town and covering as much as 20 acres.

As the article shows, these piles began a process of re-mining in the 1950s and by the seventies were but a tribute to their former glory. And, by the time that I began seeing them in the 80s and 90s were even smaller. Yet even at this dramaticly smaller size to me and to my friends and family they were still these major landmarks known as the "chat piles".

Once, early in my teens, myself and several of my friends climbed one of these awkward dunes without a desert, making the heroic climb to the top and then inevidible running then falling down the opposite side. By this time they had become a playground for at ATVs. There were rumors that at the top one might happen upon a hidden sink-hole and be sucked down into the sand never to be found again.

The mounds, though picked over for lead and other metals still pollute area rivers and streams, air, and ground to some extent. One study found that 11 percent of children in the area were beyond the level that constitutes lead poisoning which is said to lead to...

"lower intelligence scores, poor attention levels; hearing, speech and language problems; reading

disabilities; reduced motor skills and poor hand-eye coordination."

Now it begins to make some sense.

While I can't help feeling a little romantic about these mining relics, I also feel a bit betrayed. A brief look back puts me living at one point or another in Desloge, Park Hills, Doe Run, and Old Mines, all lead mining sites Old Mines named for being the eldest in Missouri, mined in the 1720s. And once in Pevely which borders the town Herculaneum, the infamous site of the state's smelting facilities, evacuated several years back as lead levels became dangerously high.

As a child no one ever told us this. I really had no idea the mounds had anything to do with mining. I thought it had something to do with the adjacent glass factory, which as it turns out was built to make use of it.

So next time you ask me a question and I sing the answer back to you to the tune of the Gilligan theme, or I say something a little too loud and then repeat it back to myself as I walk away, I'm not trying to be a dick. I've just got enough lead coursing through my veins to make me legally retarded.

My Winnipeg

2009-05-03T23:34:00.000-07:00

After having seen Tales from Gimli Hospital I was intrigued but thoroughly confused. Having chanced upon Cowards bend the Knee I decided to watch it. My confusion fell away as I was taken in completely by its beauty. Like David Lynch , Guy Maddin has the surrealistic ability to finesse as much depth and neuroses into a black and white silent film as you'll find anywhere in films which have the advantage of color and dialogue. Having realized that the Saddest Music in the World was his work, a film who's look and title attracted me but had somehow fallen through the cracks, I made for it as soon as possible, eager to see how he'd be able to improve his craft with a bigger budget.

I turned the film off nearly 15 minutes in. Maddin had in his revivalist spirit suffered the same folley as the greats of the silent era by allowing dialogue into the film. Chaplin and Keaton were marvelous so long as they allowed their bodies to do the talking and the music to carry the tone. When they started talking something was undeniably lost, especially with Keaton who's weird little voice directly antithesized his stubbornly heroic characters.

But, obviously I didn't give up on Maddin and I hoped My Winnipeg would be a return to form. Maddin calls the film a "docufantasia". Its an autobiography where Maddin and his family share the spotlight with the films other most important character the city itself, a city characterized by its nostalgia, it's frosty clime, and most of all by its sleepiness.

Maddins voice over met with my immediate disapproval, but over time I settled into it and began to trust him as a tour guide through this place I had little knowledge of, trying to forgive some of the more purple prose, in order or open myself up to his dream-like wave-lengh. It was easy to identify with the protagonist a man fed up with "home" and eager to set his heels to a less frustrating landscape.

So what's keeping him here?

He begins to describe with the same importance both the historic idiosyncracies of Winnipeg as well has his own living biography, which he tells as a sort of self-referential docu-experiment that blends perfectly with the rest of the film, which includes a workers revolution, the demise of professional hockey in Winnipeg, and probably the most shocking a stable fire which ends with the heads of several anguished horses coming frozen up out of a lake like tortured stumps, a spectacle which attracts the city's romantics and is apparently responsible for a baby-boom.

Maddin himself is most romantic though. Winnipeg seem to flow through his veins on the same scale and Fellini's Rome or Scorcese's New York. He knows the city intimately. One get the sense that like a disproportionate amount of it's citizens he could sleepwalk through it, and with My Winnipeg he takes us along with him on that dream walk.

Vegetarian Meatloaf

2009-05-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

La centre peace

le grand biggery (click to engrandize sil vous plait)

la Posterier

Les Details...

2009-04-20T21:50:00.000-07:00

MYTH:

FACT:

Bird of Prey

2009-04-16T02:08:00.000-07:00

hey, look at this...

click the picture to enlarge

also...
i came across this guy/girl on youtube

and my mind was blown into tiny little gratified bits.

he/she goes by the name BLU
www.blublu.org

here's another...enjoy

Labor of Lust

2009-04-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

life in the street, it's pretty ruff

you gotta be strong you gotta be tuff

no regrets and no remorse

down the street on my iron horse

'cuz I'm a midnight rider

when night-time falls

out in the street

I make the laws.

Hear the entire album @

www.myspace.com/fuckyoutheinternetisforpussies

photos by Matt Bryan

A Woman Under the Influence

2009-04-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

I know very little about the director John Cassavetes, except that Martin Scorcese holds him in the highest regard. And since I hold Scorcese in the highest regard it's high time I see one of his films.

I got the sense from the Criterion packaging that the film might be out on the fashionable or artistic edge the 60-70s, something with high aspirations, but perhaps in the hands of a director with a too stylistic an agenda. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The film makes good on its promise to be edgy, challenging, different, but more than that it takes the viewer on a highly rewarding emotional journey on the level of character studies from the era like Five Easy Pieces, or Cool Hand Luke.

The woman in question is Mable, a wife and mother who may or may not be suffering from a mental illness. Her husband is domineering and manipulative yet we get the impression that he has all the best intentions. After we get this set-up down in the first 30 mins or so, we are treated to nearly an hour of Mable(Gena Rowlands) giving what must have been one of the most emotionally taxing performances in film history. In this hour we get to know Mable well which is to say we get to know her condition well and how it drives just about everyone around her to the brink.

The film is in 2 parts. Nearing the end of the first part the film reaches it's emotional climax as Mable comes more unhinged and is sent away. An interview with the director reveals that he feels her character to be more symptomatic of her social situation that of any mental problem, a revelation that is hard to swallow considering Mable's paranioa and muttering. Her dialogue though is at once damning and canonizing as while she seems to be cracking under the emotion strain of her family she nevertheless voices personal emotional epiphanies about her marriage that would make anyone go...huh. Her husband while having hit her on one occasion and yelled at her in front of friends, rises to a level approaching herioc in this unscored iconic scene that ends with an abrupt cut to the husband at work a soft country song playing in the background. Work is emotionally easy. It's home-life that requires real energy.

The second half of the film is Mable's return home. She struggles to keep her excitement in check, which makes her seem profoundly sad and pathetic. Incapable of seeing her this way, her husband takes her aside, from their family guests, to re-establish his control over her and snap her out of the sadness spell. By measures it works, until Mable is up on the sofa twirling about and humming a song. Their guests leave and the family returns to chaos, until right near the end when Mable, putting her children to bed becomes sweet and soft spoken.

"I'm worried about you" her son says to her has she tucks him into bed.

"Don't worry about me, I'm a grown up" is her reply. Which, when taken in context is the punchline to this 2 1/2 hour love story.

2009-04-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe not the best movie mash-up on You-tube.

It's no Curious Case of Forrest Gump

or Brokeback to the Future
But heres the point, As it says, both of these films came out in 1999.

American Beauty also came out that year which is essentially the same film.

I'm only beginning to realize the impact this concentration of films had upon my impressionable 17 year old mind.

They all focus on a central character, an every-man, who has been offering his life to the machine and finds a convenient exit in order to live out his true existential calling.

These were my heros, and in many ways still are, as the movies themselves are representations of the ideas of those who would soon become my literary heroes Sartre, Thoreau, Vonnegut, Orwell, Huxley and the like, though lately I find myself reading things far less confrontational....so it goes.

Any way you want to slice it though, 1999 was a great year for movies .It was the year of Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, Titus, Payback, Dogma, and Eyes Wide Shut...though I can't say I watched that one until a few years later And, it was also the year of Office Space which is strikingly similar in theme to the big 3 above.

But if you were 17, an outsider, and had seen The Faculty, and Disturbing Behavior the year before, then you knew that the status quo were all sheep pulling their wool over your eyes anyhow. 1999 was the nail in the coffin.

Collectively we let our stubble grow, started appreciating bed-head, got familiar with eastern-thought, wore dark colors, and tried to find the back door. Our great war , tyler told us, was a spiritual war, our great depression our lives.

Those of us who didn't stay home voted for Nader.

The rest is an inconvenient history.

Sci-Fi Tribute

2009-03-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

So, I found this album

Star One - Space Metal

The Album is a Prog-Metal Tribute to some of the Great and Not so great Sci-Fi Films/TV shows from the 60s on up through the 90s.

The lyrics to each song contain the themes and plot to it's respective film.

You can read the lyrics and hear samples at the creator Arjen A. Lucassen's website.

Try to see if you can guess which film each song is. The answers are on the albums Wikipedia Page

In tribute to this album and to another great film which went overlooked, I offer you the following:

SMART BUGZ

McLanahan and Ironside
A twinkle in Gary Busey’s eye
Doogie Howser, CasVan Diem
Intergalactic super team!

Exoskeleton armored bugs
Killing everything we love
Buenos Aires Up in Flames
Metal Arena Football Games

Cheesy Propaganda reel
Lets us know how we should feel
Total Recall, Robocop
Director has impressive Chops

Fiesty Curly red haired chick
Sex with Casper in a tent
Grab your guns, pull up your pants
Giant Killer Bug Attack!

Now we have to make them pay
Our homes a Galaxy away
Everybody here is dead
Bugs with laser Guns for heads

How do they know all our plans
At this rate we have no chance
Bugs that eat our brains for food
Your some kind of big, fat, smart bug aren’t you

Now we have their Achilles Heel
Looks as if their fate is sealed
Alien movies end this way
Just like Independence Day

Hat Trick

2009-03-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

The main thing.

The whole thing. (click to enlarge)

A part.

Another part.

More Frame Comics

2009-02-21T10:29:00.000-08:00

Here's the whole thing..Click on it to enlarge.

It will be hanging in my bathroom...

Cant wait to see you there!

Making a Spectacles

2009-02-11T05:30:00.000-08:00

Hey...I've made a thing. A thing i think you'll like.

It is a drawing thing.

Here's the whole thing.

Here are some details...Because I know you like details.

Since this thing won't fit on my scanner, I had to take pictures of it.

If you want to see all of it...it will be on display at the M.F. McCubbins Art Gallery and Living Room @ 4030 Cleveland Ave. From about Noon Yesterday until my lease is up.
Can't wait to see you there!

Life is a Driveway

2009-02-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

www.toothpastefordinner.com

Over a period of years I've let go of my childhood dream of writing the next great American novel. I have since given myself over to the more realistic adult dream of writing books for children. Let's take a peek at some of my work shall we...

XML Data Management 4 Kids is one of a collection of office system networking and analysis books I've created for the younger set. Others include: Dot Net Frameworking and Configuration Issues 4 Kids, Practical Component Model User/Client Systems 4 kids, Java Security Basics 4 Server Management Personnel 4 Kids, also Digital Cameras For Dummies 4 Kids, and the Complete Idiots Guide to Micro-Information Distribution Nano-circuit Encryptions.

Dinosaurs in Space: The True Story of How Dinosaurs Brought the Word of God to the Rest of the Universe is a child's guide to some of the first known interactions between God and the dinosaurs. This book has received much acclaim from the scientific and critical community. The New York Times called it "Unbelievable"... and Dr. William H. Phelps of the Center for Dinosaur research in New Mexico said "...well...true...I cannot prove it didn't happen...good...science". Over several books the Dinosaurs in Space travel all over the universe always surprised nobody else has heard of the Bible.

Let's Have a Look at: Uranus is from my series of children's science books featuring the frisky Professor Knows-it-all. While most "scientists" give Uranus a topical treatment at best, Professor Knows-it-all probes deep into the little known parts of Uranus with plenty of large color photos throughout. Part of the Let's Have a Look At series, The Doctor tackles other subjects including Household tools, and Teen Pregancy.

Firemen: Why They Eat Children is a book about staying safe in a world full of strangers. Other titles from this series include Indians: Why God Won't Let Them Fight Back, Police Men: Guns Can Be Funs, Exploring Vans, and Mommy, I Can Make a Stew Too.

Remember books are for kids but adults can read too!, So give the kid you envy in you one of these books today, he might be less disappointed in the adult you've become!

Juliet of the Spirits

2009-02-04T10:42:00.001-08:00

You thought I was joking didn't you.

Could Mike be so self-important that he would write film reviews on his blog? We'll....yes, hes talking in the third person isn't he? You see the reason I sleep in so late in the mornings is because it takes a lot of energy to lift such a swollen head out off the pillow not to mention fit it out the bedroom door, where it meets with the real world and slowly deflates. And so I must run back here to the internet and nurse it back to disproportionate size.

Or maybe its just because I like you and I want to share things of beauty with you.

Anywhooo..."Juliet of the Spirits"

The first of Federico Fellini's films in color. Starts us out with Juliet, a faithful servant of a wife, preparing a anniversary dinner for her husband. Fellini prepares for us this intimate scene and then immediately undercuts the tension with the introduction of an ensemble of chatty sycophants in the sort of piecemeal roam-about style of which he is so popular. The seeds of the story are planted: The husband Giorgio has a mistress, and a guiding spirit "Iris" is introduced to Juliet. As the film progresses Giorgio's infidelity becomes more and more apparent, and Juliet is forced to confront him and then inevitably face her own confused feelings of loyalty, trust, sexuality, freedom, and guilt.

Lead actress Guilletta Masina of one of Fellini's earlier and ultimately more popular films the oscar winning "La Strada" plays the part with a lot of depth. Appropriate, considering she had been married to Fellini for over 20 years.

In many ways Juliet is an extension of many of the same devices Fellini invents in 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita. Symbolic characters form the past are reintroduced into the present to represent Juliet's conflicting ideas. New characters are introduced which may or may not be real. In the end all of the characters must confront each other, like when you're at the grocery store with your mother and your teacher is there buying toilet paper. A serendipitous meeting for them sure, but for you a explosively frightening occasion that begins to warp and bleed your carefully constructed and segregated worlds into each other. Fellini goes ahead and puts your mom, your teacher, your first kiss, your naked grandfather, and a sexy horse all into the same frame and demands that though this is going to be hard for you to accept and consolidate, this cacophonous parade of separated realities may be the only way for you to transcend the subtle ways in which these distinctions tyrannize your freedom.

So yeah...watch this film if you have the chance to, especially if you're fond of 8 1/2.

On an unrelated note, stay the fuck away from Wizards that animated piece of garbage from the makers of "Fritz the Cat"...Don't get sucked in by the attractive cover art. This movie, the last thing I got from Netflix, was a disaster from wobbly start to oversimplified finish.

Damning Evidence

2009-02-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

If you were to take the monthly count of blogs ive made since i started some months ago and place them on a chart marking the coordinates of variables x(months in) and y(number of posts), a striking pattern might materialize in front of you...even more striking considering the limit data your using to make these assumptions! Nevertheless, the predictions you could make from such a pattern would be disheartening to say the least.

For this reason, i have been considering options that might make this blog more prolific, perhaps at the cost of its more spontaneous feel and overall appropriatly comic tone. Some of these Options include:

1. Writing reviews of all the movies I get from netflix.

2. Making it more "animation oriented" by posting more animation vids and info.

3. Just going to marriedtothesea.com each day and reposting their stuff.

4. Let you the reader in on more of my private intimate life moments.

5 Posting highly photoshopped pictures of my genitalia.

6. Planting and nurturing a cactus, and giving you daily updates on its growth and upkeep.

7. Locking a hobo in my shed, giving him an unlimited supply of lsd and very little food...and giving you daily updates of his growth and upkeep.

8. cosmetic surgery

9. posting highly rendered painted representations of my genitalia.

10. fulfill my titular obligations of offering a lengthly list of the deceased.

Yes, I know you don't want these things. You want more pictures of dinosaurs with hiar, well my mind is like a a mud puddle...a mud puddle the size of Arkansas...covering lots of territory...but not much depth.

If your into anime you might have heard "the internet is where the subconcisous mind comes to vent"

If that be the case then maybe I'll just do this when i feel the need to vent, much like defecating.
But i'm prone to get things like "inspiration" mixed up with "self-important delusions that cause me to consider the modicum of interest in this blog a personal mandate." and "boredom" ...

anyhow...i've still got a little juice left so im going to post a few animations/animators i like...

This brit "Cyriak" does some crazy stuff incorporating stock pictures and real video cuts...as with all these i recommend mining youtube to watch all their glorious vids..

This is part of the "spamland" series by the English "Brothers Mcloed" the monologue is taken from the trash in a spam e-mail used to try to beat spam filters

Scottsman David Shringley...beautiful ink

Also...im going to add a couple things to the big list of blogs section.

2009-01-19T11:33:00.000-08:00

MYTH:

FACT:

Soft Rock Cafeteria

2009-01-17T20:37:00.000-08:00

I've decided to open up my own celebrity themed eatery, and I got a few of my famous friends to help me spice up the menu by posing for some pictures.

Starting with the Entrees:

You'll want to RUSH in for..

SpaGeddy-Lee $21.12

Join the Club with...

Okra a-la-Winfey $12.40

Fall in love with...

Egg's Ryan $13.85

With unforgettable sides...including

The Original Nat King Cole-Slaw $4.00

And to wash it down?

Fat Free at at last!

Skim MiLK $3.75

WIth a bevy of delectable desserts!

Get Hooked on ...

Ice-Kaream-Abdul Jabaar $4.99

More Berries in Every Bite of...

Blew Berry-more Muffins $5.00

We're serving up...

Banannas Kournicova

Give me your free hand...

Iggy's Pop-corn $7.25

If you're still reading this...

Eazy-Cheez-E: Not for sale

You deserve whats coming to you...

Alexander's Graham-Crackers and Bell-Peppers...whatever..

i'm not really opening a restaurant

..sorry

High Quality Pasta Options

2009-01-02T20:02:00.000-08:00

2008-12-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

MYTH:

FACT:

Stuff thats Great in 2008

2008-12-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

Without provocation or pretext you will now be subjected to some of my favorite things of the year 2008.

First.....Music
Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

Fog lifts from the harbor...dawn goes down today...an agent crests the shadows of a nearby alleyway starts out this beautiful mix of songs that sounds like reading your favorite book of short stories...much like great shorts..these song earn/require repeated listenings...The goats started out recording modern classics on tape recorders..Yet its taken them little time to master the use of layered instruments, atmospherics, builds and breaks, earning them their jump from paperback to hard cover

Atmosphere - When Life Gives you Lemons, You Paint that shit gold.

The Gold box caught my eye. The title made me listen. The songs blew me away. I had no idea that anyone was making rap music like this. I'd heard the name thrown around...good thing though i never actually listened till this album. As i took a listen back through older albums, nothing really even comes close to these songs. Its 13 or so tracks of almost entirely fictional narratives that come through MC Slug's highly emotional/emotionally troubled lyrics like as many after school specials directed by Aronofsky...Lyrics and stories aside the album still kills you with its brilliant use of low key beats and samples.

Yes, the new murder by death was good...and the new tv on the radio is great, mogwai and ratatat too, but were all slight let downs....lump of montreal, don cabalerro, sigur ros, hot chip, the mars volta, ben folds, in that same catagory of albums that didn't quite live up to my insanely high expectations.

Next up Movies...

Synecdoche New York

Charlie Kaufman becomes a film-maker and his prediliction for self reference gets the treatment it deserves. If were all going around picturing our lives as movies what are we losing or gaining in the careful writing and rewriting of our own characters. Synechdoche breaks nearly every wall imaginable to expose itself to itself and to the audience. I love to see a movie or any work of art for that matter reach out so ambitiously further that its grasp. Whether or not it comes back with a fresh kill it's important that someones going to new places. Synechdoche wants not only to be a film but a new religion and nearly suceeds on every level save a few forgivable moments when it whines slightly louder than it hurts.

Mister Lonely

It's Harmone Korine's goal to bring thing to film that you haven't seem before. In Mister Lonely he gives us 1. Abe Lincoln reciting an in your face version of the Gettyburg Address while spinning a basketball and under a strobe light. 2. A seemingly invincible nun sky diving while riding a BMX. 3. Charlie Chaplin beating Marilyn Monroe. And somehow he is magicly able to spin all these sweet little pop culture gems into a movie with a plot; an interesting, engaging, and rewarding one at that with the best ending since No Country for Old Men.

Books then...
Frederick Peeter's Blue Pills

The author meets the love of his life...and then finds out she has HIV.
Instead of doing what any sane person would do which is run fast and the other way,
He does what he knows is right and what he wants to do which is stick around and get to know her. What follows is the real life story of living with, overcoming, and making great graphic fiction out of the worlds scariest disease.

I Shot a Man in Reno - Graeme Thomson

If Chuck Klosterman were more of an intellectual and less of a comedian he would have made something like this book. Which is a completely legitimate look at the history of Death songs
From Shakespeare on up through Eminem. Thomson can respect the sentimental and also keep it at a proper distance. He keeps a scientific tone yet allows for pop music to be what it is, which is something to be felt, and appreciated on a level above numbers and lists which is just what you must do if your going to delve in the stuff of the times.

Now you know what I like.

Get to shoppin' bitches!

Puppet blog

2008-12-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

You've probably heard of this guy Jeff Dunham...the comedian, well ventriloquist who's talent for talking with his mouth shut exceeds his ability to say anything funny. Turns out hes the hottest thing since the Macarena...his puppet shows are flying off the shelves...he even has a christmas special.

Sure, he sucks, but there's something to the fact that in the era of million dollar CG effects a guy with crappy puppets is making a killing...

Yes, the power of puppets has lasted since the dark ages...

Do yourself a favor. Draw a face on a paper bag, glue some googly eyes to a sock, or just put a potato on a stick...there will be good times...

A pretty cool hand

2008-12-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows that a man can eat fifty eggs

One of the many wisdoms Newman gave us.

Few know though about another gift he bestowed upon us before he passed

The Fig Newman

Part of his long line of fine organic products...

While some might see this as a clever way to cash in on a good coincidence
I feel like he was offering a challenge to all of us left in his wake.

And so, having bought a box of these at my local hippie haberdasherie...im going to extend this bet

I CAN EAT A WHOLE PACK OF FIG NEWMANS

thats a net weight of 12 oz or 340 grams...approximately 18 newmans

who dares challenge me?

Stand and be counted.