because either I know little, or this castle is enchanted
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
This thing is as good a reason as any to download Google Chrome, I would say after being convinced to watch/do it the after the at least fourth time I went to the site via various internet links. It's an "interactive movie" involving the third best song on the new Arcade Fire record and whatever address you put in "of the home where you grew up" assuming there is enough google maps data on that particular address. Mine didn't so I was going to put in the NUKE address but I couldn't remember it and a cursory search was disrupted when I found this quote below and decided it needed to be posted. Anyway, yeah, cool thingy.
Kappa Sigmas at Davidson College (Davidson, NC) also lost their charter during the spring. New Members beat a goose to death with golf clubs in a public park -- after luring it to them with bread crumbs.
There are many different variables in whether a particular song is good in concert. A big one is whether the musician and the crowd can feed off each other's energy. I don't feel like listing any more, so let's get to the point. This is an attempt for to make a post about songs that when I hear them take me to a particular place in time, while trying to be less self-indulgent than that sounds and failing. Goats have eaten at least half these videos before.
Killing in the name of - Rage Against the Machine
An obvious choice.
National Anthem - Radiohead
What the fuck 3:49? No seriously I'd never even heard this before and then that opening riff (which is not at 3:49 because it is at the beginning, or was that obvious) goes and makes people crazy with euphoric joy.
Crystal Cat - Dan Deacon
That video is remarkably low budget. I think if I got a vote on what should be put in like a 1 terabyte thing that we could show civilization(?) in a millenia or two from now it might be that.
Korn - Blind
Oh man, remember Korn? Definitely superior to Deftones, yet so similar, like comparing Bakersfield to Sacramento. Anyway yeah you will probably will die if you heard this song in person 10 years ago.
Cypress Hill - Ain't goin out like that
I only picked this because "Insane in the Brain" is cliche. The best part is when they smoke the giant bong.
Wolfmother
This is what it would kind of be like to see Led Zeppelin or The Who or some other 70s shit in a smaller venue. It was a good show at the Electric Factory anyway.
The Kids Aren't All Right - The offspring
This may be an outlier/wrong. Time to publish and call it a night.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Watching this last night, I was all like "Man I sure hope someone makes a gif of that so I can put it on my blog." Go team internet.
Also I'd like to type words here indicating that this Betty Draper character is an insolent child and a terrible person. I could tell because of her relating well to the child psychologist, and the daughter-slapping. "You're soft, Henry." Well, he's no philandering alcoholic, that's for sure.
In conclusion: Japanese businessmen and Highlights magazine.
Eventually one of the penguins, whom the zookeepers had named Merle, caught the butterfly and ate it. Then Merle died because that particular species of butterfly is poisonous to penguins. The end.
Memories fade over time, especially those about how a friend you hadn't seen in like five years can be a huge flake. So it's actually surprising when plans weeks in the making are abruptly canceled less than 24 hours before they are scheduled to take place. Oh, your spouse suddenly has to take a "Mission to Mars" and now you don't have anyone to watch your kid? Huh, I was under the impression that NASA tended to plan things out far in advance, unless there is like a huge asteroid bearing down on earth. Better call up Bruce Willis and his motley crew of roustabouts and roughnecks ... unfortunately they are done down at the spill in the gulf and have spread far and wide, necessitating chasing some guy on horseback down with helicopters. Where's Steve Buscemi? Why, the strip club of course, that lech. Anyway, worthless.
Finally, the English soccer league preview no one knew they wanted: Teams as interpreted via internet videos. Selections made via a combination of drunken esoterics and personal frustration.
People who quit their jobs in "amusing" ways James Buchanan, 15th president of the US The term "game-changer" in non-sports any context Paris Hilton Alaska Black SUVs 90+ degree temperatures Some guy on MTV's The Real World Furries This remix The Cathy comic strip Painting furniture with oil-based paint (Primer? God!) The lack of fox soccer channel's HD feed on Verizon FIOS The guy who called me a small man filled with high handed arrogance, with "absolute power" because I banned him from commenting on a website (wait no, I find this hilarious)
Me: Going to the Phils game tomorrow Other person: Nice. Who's pitching? Me: Fucking Joe Blanton/Jamie Moyer. Other person: expression of marginal sympathy Me: Yeah, I got season tickets, we see this asshole every time and its getting old. Other person: Season tickets? Don't you get to see all the games? Me: It's just a partial season plan, and I got half a seat, so 8 games or so. I see your eyes glazing over. Other person: ... Me: Our seats are in left field so I can't even see the pitcher, the main concern is who is playing left field for the opposing team. It's good when they win. Other person: Oh yeah? Me: We yell at them. The left fielders.
Probably should have put this up on Friday, so you could have clicky clickied while we Phillies fans descended on Nationals Park in Washington D.C. like a plague of locusts. Or maybe a cloud of some smaller flying insect, that is less plague-like and all-consuming and more annoying. Like gnats. OH YEAH I WENT THERE BOTH LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY.
In case you are wondering where the hell the Mad Men Power Rankings are these days: This place. Reverse fingerbang alert! Lisanti is a hero.
Speaking of other things that are also on that particular web site: The Jersey Shore v. Kanye West's Twitter, which is better/more authentically enjoyable. My vote is for the twitter, because of the persian rugs. Also: Goblets. Is this serious?
In wildly depressing economic blog posts, this guy says call the current situation "a compressive deflationary contraction, because that's exactly what it is, an accelerating systemic collapse of activity due to over-investments in hyper-complexity."
How does a graphic artist/cereal executive determine the amount of savage cannibalistic glee with which the "Krunch Head" characters tear into bowls of what one must presume is smaller versions of themselves? Is there a standard archetype of how cartoons on the boxes of cheapo brands of cereal are drawn? Possibly Count Chocula-based? Also there is a natural tendency to draw a comparison with crackheads, considering both the name of the cereal and the dead-eyed mania that Mr. and Mrs. Krunch Head are splashing the milk out of the bowls. I find it highly unlikely that anyone would purchase this cereal intentionally.
One reason was going to see it on the hottest day of the hottest summer so far. Because theaters are air-conditioned. But the weather is a banal reason for doing just about anything in human history, including this. The real reason is more about film, and the film, than what its doing outside. The spoiler alert is implied.
If there would be one word, it would be structure. Not so much narrative, because in my mind that implies the words that are spoken by the characters, which left something to be desired. No, the structure of the film is what makes it, in what I'll call my informed opinion, good. Comprehension is a wonderful thing.
I don't want to get into the specifics of Inception. Or maybe I do? Dreams within dreams. Actually four levels of dreams, if you count the shores of the subconscious they fall to when dying in dreams they can't wake up from. Also reality makes five. And each time the characters go into another dream, from their previous dream that they were dreaming, somehow their minds operate exponentially faster. This allows for a comprehensive assault on a snow fortress in the time it takes a van to drive off a bridge into a river.
In many filmmakers hands this would be convoluted. And it is, probably. But Christopher Nolan is nothing if not a precise and technical director. I can imagine him assigning a whole team of nerds to figure out how long each scene should be on each level of dreaming, when there is cutting back and forth between the aforementioned falling van and snow fort scenes, and also Joseph Gordon Levitt getting in gun battles/problem solving in a weightless environment. It feels accurate!
But I've already said to much, or possibly too little. Its a good movie, even if the gist of the final scene is apparent withing the first five minutes. This is coming from someone who'd take confusing over mindless any day when it comes to 2-hour 200-million dollar blockbusters. Not to hate on Transformers* of course. Many people lack comprehension skills, thus summer media besides Mad Men tends to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Anyway, Inception is a good movie, the best to come out in this blighted film season. It inspired me to make some post using the structure that fits it so well. It might of worked, but we'll never know because in the end I just had a glass of whiskey to loosen my typing fingers and did this instead.
*hate on Transformers 2 is welcome**
**fucking jive-talking robots
Friday, July 23, 2010
How was I not aware of this until today? I specifically said that I was to be informed of all hysterical reactions to natural phenomena.
edit: So I decided I needed to record the dialog from that video for those of you who can't access Youtube (these people exist?) ... it's a better use of my time* than my usual workday, which as you might of guessed spent mostly playing ACTION TURNIP!!!
Whoa that's a full rainbow all the way Double rainbow oh my god It's a double rainbow all the way Whoa it's so intense Whoa man wow whoa whoa Whohoho oh my god oh my god oh its a oh my god Whoa ho ho wow Wooooo oh my god wooooo oh my god (repeated) It's starting to look like a triple rainbow Oh my god its a full on double rainbow all the way across the sky sobbing What does this mean Moaning It's so bright oh my god it's so bright and vivid Ohhhhhh ohhhhhh ohhhhhhh It's so bright and beautiful crying and/or laughing now he's just openly weeping oh my god (repeated) It's a double complete rainbow right in my front yard Too much unintelligible what it means sigh it's so intense oh my god
It's easy to find humor in the misfortune of others. People falling down, getting hit in the groin, getting slapped in the face, all comic gold as long as its not happening to you. But where some balk at comic violence is when it happens to animals. Which brings me to this video that has made the rounds on the web this week.
Maybe its because I'm a cynic, but I find it hilarious. The way that donkey goes spiraling off into the sky, so good. But not everyone feels this way, so much so that "charges may be filed" against whoever did this, which may or not have been part of a promotion for para-sailing. It's not exactly clear what was going on, and in the rush to judgement it seems that the perpetrator/donkey-owner may have slipped away.
For some reason thinking about where to draw the line between animal cruelty and some good old-fashioned donkey fun brings my mind to a conversation near the end of Pulp Fiction. In it Jules talks about not eating pork because it comes from a filthy animal, and Vincent asks if he considers a dog to be filthy, what with the occasional shit-eating. Eventually they determine that it's a dog's personality that makes it not filthy, just dirty, and that a pig would have to be "ten times more charming than that Arnold on Green Acres" to cease in its filthiness.
Which is a good way to say that certain animals are more sympathetic than others. I might better understand the outrage at this alleged donkey torture if instead of a donkey, it was a dog flying through the air, possibly never to be seen again. But come on, it's a fucking donkey. A pack animal, used to carry things and plow fields and other back-breaking labor. Who knows, perhaps its braying, which many have interpreted as stemming from fear, is actually indicative of excitement/joy. If I was a Russian donkey, I'd enjoy an occasional para-sail to break up the drudgery of my daily existence, which I assume would involve turnips.
But yeah, people have different sensibilities, which means "horse people" can feel more empathy with this stupid donkey than with another human being. This argument boils down to the idea that animals are "innocent" because of their lack of free will. The line of thinking goes that animals have no control over their fate, and thus must be protected at all costs. Also there is the perceived "connection" that the animal lover has developed with a creature that doesn't know shit except maybe a few behaviors it associates with getting delicious food. So yeah, put that donkey on a para-sail for my amusement.
Addendum: It's unclear how much being bitten by a horse at age 8 is affecting my opinion on this matter.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
But the hope that we could carefully control how others view us in different contexts has proved to be another myth. As social-networking sites expanded, it was no longer quite so easy to have segmented identities: now that so many people use a single platform to post constant status updates and photos about their private and public activities, the idea of a home self, a work self, a family self and a high-school-friends self has become increasingly untenable. In fact, the attempt to maintain different selves often arouses suspicion. Moreover, far from giving us a new sense of control over the face we present to the world, the Internet is shackling us to everything that we have ever said, or that anyone has said about us, making the possibility of digital self-reinvention seem like an ideal from a distant era.
There is probably no better way to dive straight back into the inanity of the internet (internanity?)than with this "Gathering of the Juggalos" infomercial. Gallagher and Ron Jeremy?!? So much to process just in the dialogue/voiceover: "Coming to regulate ninjas it's Warren G" "The girl I went to high school with, no lie, Tila Tequila!" "Ain't no two juggalos alike, truthfully" "The gathering has fresh and exciting shit to do all around the fuckin' clizock. Helicopter rides. Carnival rides. Midway games. Seminars." "And if you like midgets, we've got midgets for ya" etc etc etc. Not to mention the production valuues and sets.
I know making fun of juggalos is easy. Saturday Night Live even did it with some success. But shit man, I gotta start it off slow coming off a glorious internet-free week.
Friday, July 09, 2010
Some people go Boo, they go quack quack, they go keek Some people have nothing and want nothing and are free Some people want to burn the world with their greed We just want to have a good time
Something about the heat just takes it out of you, you know? I'm not sure if there is literally nothing going on anywhere (edit: besides maybe duck boats), or that it just seems that way because of the oppressive temperatures. So dissatisfied! But I guess I should post something, given that I'm heading out of town next week to the family vacation compound in Maine, as required by my WASP heritage.
But what (who? why?) could I possibly type words about? Some Daily Show-ladyblog kerfuffle? No, I don't think that is a real thing, not even going to link it. A Will an egg fry on the sidewalk video. Something about the books I'm taking on vacation: Don Quixote and How Soccer Explains the World. That didn't take long. An account of fourth of july partying:
Last weekend I celebrated the most American of holidays in the most American of ways, by getting progressively drunk while engaging in outdoor sporting contests with people I had just met. This inevitably ended with me crashing my bike into a car's side mirror, but not before bashing the hell out of the top of my foot ... playing volleyball? Jesus, who cares/remembers. Not me that's for sure.
HHHHNNNNNNNNNNGGGGHHHHHHH. I will now be entertaining myself by recreating this scene (in my head) for the rest of the day. Talk amongst yourselves.
