i saw that dr. delay posted up these really creative remixes done in a marching band style on this record forum i frequently check. here’s another one bites the dust. it’s totally blowing my mind right now. marching band drums knock hard, did you not realize that in high school? ok dance party in my room right now. we’re listening to this on repeat. why? cause it’s FIRE. dude i don’t even like queen. but sometimes i like this song cause i can sing “this. is. radio. clash!” know what i mean? ok, click below for a sip of the juice

here’s the link to the zshare page if you want to download it.

young and i went to kristy’s house for a lo-key movie nite. i told her i had the superchunk and pavement dvds from netflix earlier that day and she said she loves superchunk and pavement which i did not know. so we smoked, ate pizza & wine and watched a bunch of 90s indie rock. kinda nice to be able to share my love for the “package thief” and “the first part” videos with someone who liked those songs. the circle is now complete

My friend Stef of Vinyl Exchange did an all female mix of fast rap as part of the latest installment of VE Radio. It’s called “Fast Women” and you can download it here and check out the tracklisting here. Do it cause it’s really good.

also, i know this may not be worth posting to you, but i think this is the greatest thing ever:

this has been happening a lot to me recently where i’m listening to something hilarious in my headphones, bust out laughing and people stare at me on BART or at a stop light like i’m crazy. i can’t help it. anyway, it just happened at work with this song Drano in Your Veins by The Styrenes. funniest song about violence ever made:

fire in your eyes!

Speaking of comedy and violence, young and i can’t stop saying “you’re getting sajak’d” from this scharpling & wurster bit where jon wurster calls in as Pat Sajak’s volatile brother Mike and tries to shake Tom down for a Count Basie box set. The definition of “Sajak’d” either means “getting killed” or “getting showered with gifts and praises” depending on Mike Sajak’s mood (he’s a lunatic). it’s my favorite one after the Rock, Rot & Rule one. here’s a clip

I also got a sticker of The Sajak Credo with my stereolaffs order:

the knockout is my favorite neighborhood bar. they have the only color photo booth i know of in the city, they carry budget beers i like such as miller high life, sometimes bands i like play there, and thursdays is bingo night from 8-10 followed by club donuts

you get a bingo card with every drink.

just kidding. those aren’t all mine.

i won early and chose a ping pong set for some dumb reason.

lindsay was smart and chose a plant

i ran into my old friend Cas which was a nice surprise. he moved here last week from san diego

he’s fast with the face-cover whenever i break out a camera. here’s an example from 5 years ago

here’s the stage the bands play on sometimes

after bingo was club donuts, a bi-weekly nite where bands like lightning bolt and tussle have played on. sometimes it’s an all DJ nite of disco, post-punk, no-wave, robot music blah blah

you know it begins when there is the mysterious placement of donuts on bar counters and tables by some kind of donut ghost. like the tooth fairy or santa claus.

for “when you care enough to hit send.” some of these at www.someecards.com are so mean, but really funny to me. here are some examples from their many categories:

apology

birthday

courtesy hello

cry for help

flirting

get well

thinking of you

workplace

i had no idea who or what a james blunt was until i sat at the imax theater waiting for spidey to come on and this horrible song came on. young said “i hate this song” and i was like what the hell is this? “it’s you’re beautiful by james blunt” i say “it seems fake like it’s will ferrell singing on an SNL sketch” totally unbelievably & comical falsetto. it sounded like some poor guy just got castrated and somebody shoved a piano in front of him. “forget the pain, here play this!” i just couldn’t believe it was a real song.

two days later i go to the gym and get on the fake bike listening to a scharpling wurster bit where wurster pretends to be a dude complaining about all the “obscure crap tom plays that no one cares about” and asks him to play you’re beautiful. “what? you mean by james blunt??” and then that bit is over and guess what comes through the speakers of the gym? you guessed it.

anyway, here is a current events cross-post red rocker/campari $80 million transaction tie in

i saw via ross’ blog this audio reflection on Robocop. i think my very first exposure to gruesome violence in the movies was when my uncle had on blood simple on in his living room tv and then francis mcdormand does a number on m. emmett walsh’s hand. the second memory i had was a few years later when my mom rented robocop and peter weller gets swiss cheesed by eric foreman/venom’s dad and his pals. the third memory is from mom again (thanks!) where in godfather dude on the massage table gets a bullet in the eye. all of these scenes really fucked me up when i was young and gave me nightmares. but when i watched Robocop again when I was old enough to understand it, i really enjoyed it. it’s really great satire and so funny even with all the bloodbaths. The fake commercials in Robocop are the best:

you should rent this movie if you haven’t seen it in a while.

Right now i’m scanning and downloading/uploading snaps of my nephews & nieces & sisters, sipping on black coffee and in the middle of going through 5 different versions of Walk On By: Aretha’s, Dionne’s, East of Underground, El Michels Affair, & Helen Shapiro’s. I think following this with Don’t Make Me Over is in order

*spider-man 3 spoilers*

i finally got around to watching the spider-man 3 and it was so disappointing and painful. i don’t know what sam raimi was thinking with some of his decisions. it reached a whole new level of cornball even for a summer blockbuster, so cringeworthy during some points that i had to close my eyes like i always do during the bathtub scene in the shining. i’ve always liked peter parker because he’s always suffering and awkward and i loved the romantic story with MJ the girl next door. he’s like the most sympathetic and human super hero i can think of: dirt poor, hyper-sensitive, hopeless romantic, pathetically goofy but badass & engaging when he’s on a winning streak. but so many of his sympathetic attributes were portrayed so heavy handed and cheesy that i couldn’t handle it in this one. i couldn’t take all the close up scenes of parker crying. it didn’t make him sympathetic at all, it’s like they knew the qualities that made parker likable and exploited the hell out of it, putting him through the wringer every 5 minutes and making him weep and having everyone and every little thing rip his heart to shreds. there were so many moments where it felt like raimi forgot how to give his characters depth and reverted to evil dead camp, which i do enjoy, but only works on a small budget scale and with bruce campbell (and only him) hamming it up. i couldn’t get into it, all these cartoony moments of turmoil and rock-bottomness. it was such a cheap and transparent way to tug on the heartstrings. also, i’m usually down for stories that warn about the dangers of complacency but not when hedonistic peter looked like this DB:

i can’t stand that jared leto guy and his horrible horrible band of posturing jerkoffs. also seeing this made me realize what a lame villain venom is. seriously, he is the worst and so overrated. i can’t believe i thought venom was a good villain at one point. what the hell. venom seems so dated like when you played tony hawk and rage against the machine was blaring as the soundtrack and you thought you were so awesome. maybe it’s a 20-something thing. i hope they wise up and dr. connors finally turns lizard in the next one. it’s better when parker’s mentors turn evil cause it takes the whole idea of “kill yr idols” to an entertaining and explosive level of emotional conflict. the most redeeming thing about this spider-man was the convincingly stoic sandman and the brief bruce campbell cameo. i hope raimi learns from his mistakes for the next one because i believe he has the smarts to deliver quality big budget entertainment that isn’t on some crappy waterworld kevin costner in waterproof leather underpants bullshit. even more smarts and sense then his fellow successful splatter-comedy classmate peter jackson with lord of the rings. i thought spider-man 1 & 2 were pretty good and that his creativity and wit still shined through all that cgi stuff.

there is a bright side that has nothing to do with spidey. when i got home i decided to look through a couple volumes of my marvel universe set from ‘83 and when i got to the K-M volume, i came across this hilarious character named Lockjaw:

yeah…it’s a 1200lb bulldog with a fu manchu/cop moustache and little antennae and has the ability to teleport. i love it. i know there must have been many clouds of smoke in the Marvel offices during that time, but this…this is a huge accomplishment. here’s another picture of Lockjaw which looks like he’s using the subway train as a formidable weapon against The Thing but it’s probably just a steal beam. i want to believe it’s a subway train but that doesn’t make sense. then again, a teleporting bulldog with a moustache doesn’t make much sense either

the discovery of Lockjaw almost makes the $15 i paid to see spidey in imax worth it cause i wouldn’t have been motivated to go through these issues again

photo stolen from diane

i listened to my sharpling and wurster comedy cds last night and i think i have a thing for jon wurster now. i say that because i went from 3-discs of that to listening superchunk’s no pocky for kitty. see i’m okay with spending the evening at home listening to dorks trying to be funny for 2+ hours. young complains about me making bad jokes all the time, so i think it makes a lot of sense for me to have a crush on him.

speaking of comedy, this is the last time i will bring up conan in sf. promise. so even though the guests last week were washed up, the segments at the beginning were still hysterical. i am retarded and can’t figure out how to edit an flv file, so i will have to settle for the youtube version where conan visits ILM. skip to the 3:09 mark where they dress him up in lazer tag gear and input him into a cgi scenario. it’s worth it i swear.

i also got my own christian paine poster of one of my favorite photobooth pictures. check it out, i think it’s fantastic. it was in exchange for helping him setup and customize wordpress cause i’m extra nerdy (read: sad) about this css stuff. still trying to figure out where in my room it should go. btw, the original one is on a wall in brooklyn somewhere.

chatting with me is unpleasant

got the audio player plugin to work finally

i also want to note that when Utah wins a game in this series, it won’t be mention here.

the nice folks at receiver gallery are hosting my post punk primer on the latest edition of the receiver radio podcast. you know.. the comp i made when i was being angsty/weird a few weeks ago. thanks to jay and jesse for spreading the angst/love

i used to obsess about buying records and then i stopped caring when i decided this hobby was too expensive to maintain and i would rather waste my money on other things such as beer, live shows, art, cameras, guitars, comics etc. i just don’t care enough about it especially when a lot of records that used to be super rare and expensive have been reissued on the cheap. a music fan is a music fan no matter how you listen and a lot of record collectors border on object fetishists which started to irritate me the last couple of months.

but i realized there is a practical reason for it… lately i’ve been missing some of my records and can’t listen to them. when i moved into the big room in my flat, i got greedy about space and put all my records in the foamhead room so i can have more hang out space in my quarters.. on top of that, i put the other turntable in the closet and the one i tried to set up in my room has the most annoying grounding noise and i haven’t been able to figure out what the problem is since january. or maybe i just don’t care enough to do some research or ask them commission hungry folk at radioshack to remedy that. i had a similiar grounding hum with my cumputer audio but was compelled to fix that right away probably cause music via my computer is instantly gratifying. btw, if you don’t know about me or my wire problem here is a rare look behind thee old receiver

so i’m kinda bummed. i realized there are some records i have that i miss that i can’t find on cd and or/would feel really lame about buying on cd because i already own them, but they are stuck in vinyl purgatory and are collecting dust and not being enjoyed which is so lamer. a lot of them are odd jazz records on obscure european labels such as the ironically named “america records” that i’ll probably only play once but there’s also a bunch of tful282 records such as funeral pudding, wormed by leonard, lovelyville and i hope it lands which played a part in the rebuilding of bridges with my former arch-nemesis who is also a fan (as noted in this entry) that i would like to play the shit out of right now. maybe i will muster some courage to ask him to give me digitized copies of these beloved records of mine. anyway, does anyone want to buy my spare technics 1200 turntable? i bought it for $400 back in the day and i think it’s worth $20 now, ha ha ha. i don’t foresee me ever making a mix on 2 turntables again and it doesn’t seem like this shit even matters to anyone anymore when serato is all up in the mix and is generally accepted amongst career deejays who want to protect their valuable artifacts. i still have fantasies about making an epic dance rock mix that is completely blended 4/4 style with no hiccups/negative space and that can only really happen with real records on 2 turntables or 1 turntable & a 4-track. but i’ve been talking about that for years. maybe it’s time to let go. if that makes me lame or a cd/mp3 apologist, then you can call me Lamedrey

i made peace with my arch-nemesis ross early this week due to us liking the same music, at the same time according to last.fm. if i were into any kind of lazy new-agey/magical thinking, i would say that it is a sign of some kind to make peace and handshakes

this bothers young who enjoyed it more when we were arch-nemesi (sp?) and ross would periodically growl “how is Lamedrey today?”

some days it feels like my idle work time is spent trying to recreate the atmosphere of the office

my pal mike davis started a snack review blog that is going to be so so awesome. a snack only blog really speaks to me as a person who has frequent snack attacks and i’m not talking just only under the influence. it’s refreshing when all the food related blogs you see are on some fine dining stuckuppery, which i do enjoy on ocassion, it’s just not my thing regularly cause i don’t have cash to burn. check it out: Snack Attack! it’s going to be hilarious and informative.

it was hot this weekend. i went to leisure on saturday and hung out with young, kristy, kevin and his gf, drank and danced to bowie and the jam and what not. it was fun. kristy and i hugged alot repeating i miss you’s. typical drunk stuff. i hadn’t seen her in maybe 2 months. also they have a photobooth there so i couldn’t resist.

my utah wish came true! i am very happy about this. they have the most boring most vanilla fans ever. just look at them in the photo i posted below of john stockton. the suns spurs game was good to watch hungover. did you see steve nash? poor guy, he kept playing but it wouldn’t stop bleeding. he looked like a horror movie. i remember when karl malone knocked his tooth out with an elbow 4 years ago in the dallas lakers playoff series.

as per usual, nobody really cares about the eastern conference including me, but i will continue to have a crush on ben wallace no matter what jersey he wears.

after the spurs/suns game, i biked to mitchell’s ice cream with young and charlie and i think there might have been a combination of dehydration from the previous nite coupled with hot weather allergies, cause the contact lens in my right eye did not want to stay in. it was too dry and it was kinda scary riding my bike like this cause i am blind as a bat without contacts and i’m not smart enough to keep a spare pair of glasses handy. i think i freaked out the girl who was taking my ice cream order cause i kept twitching and wincing and tearing and touching my eye trying to adjust the lens. so i had to go home right after to fix my eye problem when i would have liked to bike around more. haha, god. it’s always something isn’t it? it’s going to be 92 degrees today which means my home in the sunny mission district is going to be unbearable. i wish i knew someone with a pool. no one has a pool in san francisco there’s no room

Dear Basketball God,

Please let it be Utah that the Warriors face in the 2nd round. Besides LA, there is no other franchise in the NBA that I hate more than the Utah Jazz. if you need reasons, here are 2 (historically speaking):

Also what a lame name. It doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s no jazz in Brigham Young Country. they should have changed the name to something mormon related when they moved there like the Utah Polygs. Regardless, I will root for them tomorrow in their Game 7 vs Houston so i can be more excited about hating them in the next round when/if they face the Warriors. I LOVE GAME SEVENS!

Last night, i got a drunken call from brian & katie from a pub in Boston where they watched the game and wanted to share their Bay Area excitement while they were visiting the east. there was a lot of yelling and “oh my god’s” exchanged and it kinda made my night. i also tried to call my old roommate because i have many fond memories of him and his unwavering Warriors faith clapping and screaming at the TV every time a game was aired on local TV. Seriously every time, even when they were at their saddest winning percentage and perpetually lost in No Chance Land. I can’t imagine how excited he was last night. Forget reality tv, sports is the only spontaneous thing on the idiot box.

cross-post conan tie-in: wurster sitting in as max weinberg

i just spent $17 on scharpling and wurster comedy cds. christian paine emailed me an audio clip of the jock squad one yesterday and i had to buy it cause it had me in stitches. i don’t think i’ve ever spent that much on a comedy cd before, or actually any money for that matter. tom scharpling is the host of The Best Show on WFMU and jon wurster is the drummer from superchunk who calls in as different people on scharpling’s show. they’re a funny comic duo, scharpling plays the straight man to wurster’s absurd characters. i’ve listen to to rock, rot and rule probably as many times as i’ve watched blue planet episodes. ronald thomas clontle is all knowing.

listen to this:
Jock Squad audio clip

man, i need to start keeping a personal journal. my sister veronica is turning 40 soon and last night while writing my testimonial in her birthday book, i got sappy sentimental about my family and overwhelmed with gratitude. very weird because i hate greeting cards and that type of stuff and am a total half-ass usually about what i write. it didn’t help that the shangri-las and smiths came on while i was writing. if motorhead was playing it probably wouldn’t have been that heavy. actually getting a teary eyed right now thinking about it. hopefully she’ll like it.

dave said he got into conan pretty easy on monday and they had a lot of stand-by seats, so i tried on tuesday and had no luck with that. but i wasn’t disappointed. george lucas was the guest and he’s so boring, yeah…deal. most of the people waiting looked like they came from out of town. either that, or i completely avoided some neighborhoods of the city for a whole decade. sometimes i like feeling like a tourist in my town, going to big museums or getting the cheap behind the stage seats at the symphony when they’re performing a piece i’m into. i’m gonna try conan again on friday afternoon probably. not a big tom waits fan, but better and more worthwhile than lame ass george lucas. check out the scene at 8th and market.

in other news, i hope i get to see mark cuban punch a wall tonight.

also so excited about spider-man 3. peter parker and mary jane watson are wifey and husband now i think. i love them, i love sam raimi. i don’t love venom though. he sux and has a drooling problem

i stole this link from young:

see, this is why he is wears the smiths button

god, so i found out about the canon sd1000 two days ago from young and i immediately sold my sd600 so i could have it. it’s embarrassing how materialistic i am when it comes to camera shit. anyway, i lost about $50 so the damage isn’t very bad. my mind was made up when i saw that the sensitivity goes up to ISO 1600 now and i am kind of into that. it’s twice as high as my last canon and will give me lots more freedom with low light situations. it also has some face recognition crap that i don’t really understand.