Thursday, November 27th, 2003
They will be testing the fire alarms in my office for the next six hours. They’re loud. It sounds like the stock market is opening and closing every 10 minutes or so. Actually, make that every five minutes.
I went to see Once Upon A Time In Mexico last night… Plot-wise, it’s an unmitigated mess, with an enormous cast of good guys and bad guys and double-crosses, triple-crosses and maybe – just maybe – a quadruple cross. I’m not sure. But the whole thing is played up like a hyper-kinetic, over-the-top cartoon so it can’t really collapse under the weight of its own pretentions (Matrix, I’m looking in your direction). There’s a lot of humour (Clash Of The Titans lunchbox!) and the action sequences are the right combination of exciting and absurd. I can’t imagine that everyone involved in the film didn’t have a great time making it, particularly Johnny Depp. Not great cinema, but goes well with popcorn.
Speaking of which… Hellboy trailer!
Emm Gryner and Sarah Slean are playing Umbrella Music Night at the Rivoli on December 17 in support of the Toronto Disaster Relief Fund. This should be good. Tickets $12 in advance on the Umbrella Music website, $10 at the door if you want to wait until the day of.
Canadian on-line shoppers – bookmark Red Flag Deals for coupon codes and sales and whatnot. Goldfish Legs, too.
Two Preacher trade paperbacks I bought off eBay almost a month ago have finally arrived and are waiting for me at the post office. Damn my small mailbox and its inability to hold packages of comic books! Damn it all to heck!
The thing about American Thanksgiving is that it means that all my online playmates – bloggers and message board-ers – are off having turkey/tofurkey/turducken and watching football with family, leaving my regular internet haunts looking like deserted schoolyards. Sniff. Happy Thanksgiving, South-Of-49th-ers.
np – Fountains Of Wayne / Welcome Interstate Managers
Wednesday, November 26th, 2003
There’s no way I could come up with a better headline than this. Story here.
24 – You know, I was sure that when Jack and Salazar took those security guys’ uniforms, they were going to go rescue Princess Leia from cell block AA-24, maybe with Chase and Warden Whatshisname offering comical guidance across the commlinks. Alas, they stumbled out of Star Wars and into The Deer Hunter. That was pretty intense. So now I’m very curious where things will go from here – assuming the bioterror thread is nullified, are we going to be treated to 19 hours of chasing down Jack? Maybe they’ll hide out in a haunted house or Disneyland. The plot thicks.
And oh yeah, Kim is still hella stupid.
Final tally on the Pitchfork Nineties Nostalgia countdown? 44 of 100 in my collection – that’s actually one more than from the original list. Interesting. More interesting is the jump of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea from number 85 to number 4. Now that’s a re-evaluation! Maybe they took note of Magnet naming it the best album of the last ten years. Or maybe they just realized it’s a brilliant piece of work.
A little bird has told me that New Jersey’s new favorite sons The Wrens are tenatively scheduled to play the Horseshoe on February 6th. The same weekend I was supposed to be in Seattle. Note the use of the past tense – I am doing everything in my power to be back by Friday night. How’s that for devotion? Pretty good, I think.
Finding Nemo – best animated film about fish in a LONG time. What fun, what fun.
Another story from The Onion that’s just too true. But someone correct me if I’m wrong – didn’t they run this story, or one really similar to it – a couple years ago? I think the picture was different (the girl I remember in the article was cuter, IMO), but the headline and article were the same. I remember discussing the article with a guy at school. Surely The Onion isn’t out of ideas? That’s like a pillar of society crumbling, right there. Flee, flee for the hills.
Neat home science projects for your edification. If only we had the internet when I was in grade school and had to do science fair projects. If only.
It would seem I’m coming down with my third cold of the season. That’s right, THE THIRD. I swear to god, I used to have an immune system. May as well put me in a plastic bubble now and be done with it.
np – Luna / Romantica
Tuesday, November 25th, 2003
You know, even reruns of The Daily Show are riotous. And in the spirit of The Onion, they also have web-exclusive material.
I saw a commercial last night for “Christmas With The Idols” or some other such retarded program. Napalm is too good for these mooks.
Updated PFork Best of the 90s tally – 32 of 80. I’m still waiting for someone to ask why I need to have the artistic worth of my record collection validated by the lists of grumpy old hipsters…
Some of the braintrusts at the record labels have twigged onto the fact that maybe people are downloading music instead of buying it because there’s so much filler and crap on the albums that they release. So far, so good. Their proposed solution? Make the albums shorter. Not sign and promote artists who actually have enough talent and creativity to write a good record start to finish, but to just make the albums from their shit artists shorter. But keep the prices the same, of course. My god, just when you think they can’t get any stupider, they find a way. STUPID. FUCKING. IDIOTS.
Great. Now I have to go put a quarter in the swear jar. Thanks a lot.
np – Superchunk / Cup Of Sand
Monday, November 24th, 2003
Since everyone’s going to be talking about it for the next while, I’ll get it out of the way early – Pitchfork has posted the first portion of their “with the benefit of hindsight” Best Albums of the 90s list. Compare and contrast their choices with the original list, compiled right at the close of the 90s. It’s interesting to see what records they feel have held up over the intervening years and which ones have proven to be lacking in shelf life. I actually had 43 of the original choices, but it looks like PF have ve developed a much greater fondness for hip-hop since then so I don’t expect that to last. So far, 14 of 40.
Let Them Sing It For You. It’s easier if you just go there and try it than for me to try and explain it. Link from Donewaiting.
Freakgirl went to see the Tell Us The Truth tour in New York City this weekend and took pictures. Dig the slimmed down Steve Earle. I think he looks like a schoolteacher, Kyle thinks he looks like a pedophile. But Kyle is a sick puppy.
Time has compiled a list of their 25 recommended graphic novels from the last 25 years. A very grown-up list. I don’t know about calling The Dark Knight Returns a “black comedy version”, though.
I fixed the latch on my discman (It broke last month). Yay, me.
np – The Shins / Chutes Too Narrow
Sunday, November 23rd, 2003
I must have been living under a stone for the past 28 years to have not been exposed to the majesty of The Rutles before now. Words can’t describe the shame I feel for waiting so long to discover their musical genius, their–
Ah fuck it, perpetuating the joke is too much work. The Rutles were the subject of a ‘mockumentary’ in 1978, the brainchild of Monty Pyton‘s Eric Idle and Saturday Night Live‘s Gary Weis. They made a film – The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash – which chronicled the career of a fictional Liverpudlian band called The Rutles. Naturally, any similarities between The Rutles and The Beatles were purely intentional. The satire was all in good fun (George Harrison makes a cameo in the film) but still pretty damn funny. High points were the movie shoot for The Tragical History Tour, John Lennon figure Ron Nasty’s marriage to a neo-Nazi fetishist (three guesses who that’s a shot at, the first two don’t count). I, myself, want to do some Rutles covers – Galaxie 500 do a cover of “Cheese And Onions” from the Yellow Submarine Sandwich record. You can probably expect that one as cover of the week next week. They made a second Rutles movie last year – The Rutles: Can’t Buy Me Lunch – and there’ve been a few albums – even a tribute album, Rutles Highway Revisited.
The San Francisco Chronicle has managed to conduct the most inane Ryan Adams interview ever. Special appearance by Parker Posey!
Apparently it’s nice and warm out today, at least for late November. I think I should get out of my little Hobbit-hole and enjoy it while it lasts.
Update: To Shawn Doyle – I saw your email in my Hotmail junk mail box right AFTER I hit delete all… If you need to contact me, try the Yahoo address. Sorry.
np – Chappaquiddick Skyline / Chappaquiddick Skyline
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