hello rosemary’s baby! look what i found. if i had more time to kill on the interweb, i’d spend it this way. if only money were involved, i would be all over that. don’t test me!

god, it’s been a while. this movie is so entertaining and hysterical. “i came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass.” roddy’s sunglasses are stylish again wtf. i love john carpenter.

Ok so I’m pretty obsessed with that UGK “Like That” remix. Usually I couldn’t care less about spotting samples, but when film scores are used I get really excited. One time I was watching Blue Velvet and heard the strings that Amon Tobin used for a song called “People Like Frank” and I flipped the f— out. It was the precise moment Laura Dern emerged from the shadows. I’ve watched that movie so many times and i love Angelo Badalamenti and I loved that Tobin track, even used it under KRS on the Comedy Noir mix. Then another big thing hit me. It dawned on me that the Frank in the title “People Like Frank” was referring to Frank Booth, Dennis Hopper’s sicky psycho character! I almost pissed my pants when I had that revelation.

So back to this UGK remix, I’m almost positive that is John Barry and I’m 70% sure that it is from a James Bond soundtrack. i recognize that sweeping and seductive baller sound anywhere. Instead of finishing this book I’ve been reading for the last 2 months (wtf is wrong with me and my slow ass reading), tonight I’m going to dust my turntable and listen to all of my 007 OSTs. And I’m gonna sip on some cabernet and enjoy this.

Here is UGK. beware – it’s raunchy and NSFW so sack up (pun intended)
[audio:likethat.mp3]
(i never thought i would hear Dick Cheney and Tony Snow name-dropped in a song about dirty sex.)

And here are 3 (!) John Barry pieces I have on my computer which coincidentally are my favorite

off of Goldfinger
[audio:alpinedrive.mp3]

off of Moonraker (it’s the fake ending that kills me)
[audio:spacemarch.mp3]

off of From Russia with Love am i crazy or does it sounds like a clock.
[audio:tania.mp3]
um, a beautiful clock as it were. if i was a producer i’d be ALL OVER THAT

completely unrelated, i love ricky gervais’ laugh. LOVE IT!!

a few weeks ago, young sent me a link to a lowend lomo ringflash which was evil of him because he’d knew i’d buy it. he knows too well my camera compulsions and i’m sure you do as well since i’m always writing about some camera crap i bought. 3 weeks later, i finally get it. don’t ever buy anything from www.lomography.com they are slow as hell.

anyway, i think i’ll get some good use out of the flash. it has a built-in slave in addition to the hotshoe adapter which is surprising cause it’s kind of toy and came with a bunch of color filters. i think that’s what did me in because as you can see from a lot of my night shots, i love flash filters. also what was appealing was that it was $65 and ringflashes at least “real” ones are reallllllly expensive. they produce even lighting, minimize shadows and they’re usually used by fashion photographers or used for promo shots. i like this one of iggy

back to the cheap ringflash, the biggest obstacle i see is that it doesn’t come with a rig for any other cameras outside of the lomo lc-a, lomo fish eye, and holga. sucks, because i’ll have to get creative and jury rig so it will stay on my digital cameras. and it’s not a true ringflash because the real deal is a complete circle of light whereas this has 4 little flashes at each corner. it does work with digi cams though. here’s 2 test shots i took last night. i still am trying to figure out what speed i should set it at

i haven’t had a chance to test it on real actual humans yet which is what they should be used for. last night i opted to hang out with dave gahan instead of going out and meeting up with folks

OH LITTLE GIRL

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I FEEL

I’D RATHER NOT BE

THE ONE BEHIND THE WHEEL

i thought, well since i’m sitting on my ass i might as well break out the drum sticks and practice my dribbles and stick control while watching this 88 dm concert. i like to multi-task my geekery. so here i am using this magazine on the floor as my practice pad and one of the sticks flew out of my hand during “Pleasure Little Treasure” and chipped the paint off my wall where it struck. i don’t know why i feel compelled to share these things with you.

i watched the simpsons movie last nite and it was much funnier than i expected it to be. it dawned on me just how long this show has been on the air and i realized that i’ve been watching it since 9… really?? i’m old. not to mention i saw it with my old roommate and he snuck in beer for us and i felt like old times in the living room. the last few seasons have been kind of hit or miss for me though cuz a lot of the episodes seem more A.D.D. and excessive on the pop culture references that don’t pertain to anything about the story. but there have been a few great episodes. i really like the one where homer and bart convert to catholicism and marge envisions protestant heaven as a snotty WASPy nightmare and Catholic Heaven as a multi-cultural party where every party ends with everyone doing river dance on a giant cloud

seriously though i love that so much

this one is worth mentioning because i think his films are incredibly special and badass. i don’t know where to even start. scenes from a marriage, wild strawberries, & persona are ones i’m really in love with. i highly recommend you get to know him if you aren’t familiar with him outside of the Seventh Seal. hour of the wolf is awesome too but i’m scared to rewatch because it gave me nightmares for days. i used the cover for persona for my cosmic dust mix because i think Liv Ullman is kinda gorgeous

here is a decent obit from the guardian

i saw Rescue Dawn and enjoyed it. it’s probably one of the most conventional movies Werner Herzog has made as far as the story structure goes, but it still had his touch all over it like his weird sense of humor, lots of madmen (both the violent and the ‘good intentions’ kind), intensely intimidating (and breathtaking) scenes of the jungle/wildlife and strange but endearing bonds born out of the most dire and anomalous circumstances. i was a little scared when i read the examiner review and they mentioned Rambo in it, which I guess i can see cause it’s about Dieter Dengler. Dengler was the subject of Herzog’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Rescue Dawn is Herzog’s dramatized film about Dengler’s experience in 1966 in Laos. He escaped a POW camp deep in the dense nowhere of the jungle after his plane got shot down and his story of surviving is nothing short of a miracle. any fictionalized movie based on his experience during the Viet Nam war inherantly has “suspense” and “action-adventure” built into it. So yeah, it has elements of a popcorn flick and it had some flaws, but it’s not like Herzog is having an identity crisis or anything. Christian Bale plays Dengler like the subject of any Herzog movie: a guy with unreal optimism so stubborn and unwavering that it’s dangerous and borders on delusional. However unlike a lot of Herzog’s movies, this personality trait (or disorder depending on your take) ends up working out to the subject’s advantage. Although the title of the movie can’t help but remind me of Red Dawn, it isn’t pro-patriotism or gross heroism schmaltz like the trailer makes it out to be at all. the killing of ‘the enemy’ isn’t done in a macho celebratory light but rather out of complete paranoid desperation. god the trailer is garbage though. i guess they have to entice the broader audience with that kind of teaser. It’s just a good dramatic story that would (and did) make a decent and satisfying movie. what can I say though, I’m a total sucker for “man vs. nature” stories and read Lord of the Flies 4 times in 7th grade and The Most Dangerous Game like 1000.

uh.. here is a photo of werner with an AK-47 on location

i assume for gunning down leeches in the mekong delta

i was over at my friend mark and dean’s house the other night for some baseball and dinner and there was a vanity fair on the table with bruce willis on the cover. in defense of mark and dean, i think one of them must have a subscription and did not set out to purchase the issue because of some objectionable love of bruce willis.

so on the cover, he is allegedly riding a chopper (like the one he talks about in pulp fiction) because his shirt appeared to be flapped up by the wind and speed. it’s a really masculine shot, cause everyone knows bruce willis kicks ass for the US of A. “yippee-kay-yay” terrorist motherfuckers and so on? so i open the vanity fair, turn the pages to the willis feature and lo and behold – there is a 2 page spread of him smirking on the beach wearing a straw hat, no shirt and a freaking SARONG. in case you don’t know what a sarong is:

it’s so weird because when i think of the word “ethnic”, bruce willis is the first thing that comes to mind! no, not really. i was like Moe on the Simpsons, “Whaaaaa?” i looked all over online for this photo of him (shot of course by overrated celeb photographer Annie Leibowitz) but came up with nothing. sorry. but i had to tell you about it. i am so pumped to see Live Free & Die Hard now. not only because i hope to see him kick some major euro-terrorist ass in a sarong, but also Kevin Smith plays a hacker in it and he seriously rewrote all the scenes of himself. YES! Kevin Smith is such a brilliant and clever wordsmith (well that’s what a meathead told me once)

i read mike myers is going to play keith moon in a film about the crazy dude. i just can’t picture mike myers showing up at a gig fucked up on horse tranquilizers and falling asleep hunched over his floor tom. what a weird casting choice! but not nearly as weird as elijah wood playing iggy pop but still really bizarre. (hahaha @ ‘your pretty face is going to Mordor’)

i took monday off for extended r&r time and ended up rearranging my room to make it more spacious in case i want to put the drum set in there. gonna continue this streak of getting shit done since i already followed up on this ‘i wanna drum’ talk. so by the end of the week, i hope to sell my other turntable that’s collecting dust and fix my grounding hum problem with the one that’s already set up. i have to fix it since i bought a jay reatard 12″ ep today that has songs that aren’t on cd. i’m going through a jay reatard phase today. total ramones influence but so well executed and so much more than that. his tracks are too good, especially “all over again”…i’m in love with the outro on that

he plays the drums, guitar, bass and sings on them and he’s only 26. he’s put out tons of stuff with the reatards since age 16! he’s like a memphis greg ashley. are they separated at birth? they seem like kindred spirits only one brother is a disciple of roky erickson and the other brother of joey ramone.

this might be something you’d appreciate more if you’re familiar with ramones’ history and their personalities (marky kinda inept and clueless, johnny right-wing uptight asshole) but i thought it was pretty amusing:

marky ramone locks himself out of his apartment:
[audio:http://www.awwwdamn.com/marky.mp3]

makes me want to watch End of the Century again. it’s one of the better rock documentaries i can think of and the bonus is hearing the bizarre Phil Spector stories when he produced that album. odd thing is i actually kinda liked johnny when i watched this. he is such an unbelievable dick that it’s laughable and kinda really amusing. what a character he is

anyway, if you like that song “Summertime” by George Gershwin, here are 30 versions of it for download in a zip file. You know, “…you’re daddy’s rich and you’re mama’s good looking…” Maybe you’re familiar with The Zombies version.

1. Al Green – Summertime (3:01)
2. Billy Stewart – Summertime (4:57)
3. Bobby Montez – Summertime (5:49)
4. Booker T. & the MG’s – Summertime (4:41)
5. Brenda & The Tabulations – summertime (3:44)
6. Carl H. CALL – Summertime (2:22)
7. Dave Baby Cortez – Summertime (1:59)
8. George Benson – Summertime (2:25)
9. Herb Alpert – Summertime (2:02)
10. JACK MCDUFF – SUMMERTIME (4:08)
11. Janis Joplin – Summertime (5:30)
12. John Coltrane – Summertime (11:35)
13. John Schroeder – Summertime (2:26)
14. Little Beaver – Summertime (3:00)
15. LLOYD CHARMERS – SUMMERTIME (2:20)
16. Martha High – Summertime (5:25)
17. Nick Drake – Summertime (1:35)
18. Ohio Players – Summertime (7:22)
19. Salena Jones – Summertime (2:35)
20. Sam Cooke – Summertime (Pt. 1) (2:23)
21. Sidney Bechet – Summertime (4:12)
22. THE ATOMIC CAFE – Summertime (2:34)
23. The Buckinghams – Summertime (3:57)
24. The Zombies – Summertime – Demo (2:29)
25. The Zombies – Summertime (2:17)
26. Tony Ronald – Summertime (2:30)
27. Trojan Box Set – Summertime (3:05)
28. Unnamed Artist – Summertime (2:36)
29. Walter Bishop Jr’s 4th Cycle – Summertime (5:48)
30. Yuya Uchida & the Flowers – Summertime (3:55)

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

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.

*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

i really didn’t dig I Heart Huckabees and ended up turning it off thinking it was too cutesy and obnoxious to bear. here’s Lily Tomlin & David O. Russell engaging in some epic egomaniac rage on the set with Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffmann, Marky Mark and Isabella Hupert on the sidelines. pretty intense. I would never expect Tomlin to be capable of such vitriol but Russell is another story…

i kinda like Jason Schwartzman for just sitting there in the chair while Russell is screaming, throwing shit and kicking textbooks around him. He doesn’t even flinch, it’s quite amazing. Poor girl in the corner caught a bad one though. In interviews Russell claims to admire Zen Buddhist teachings. oh the irony!

(edit: fox keeps pulling this from youtube and people keep reposting it. i’ll try to keep updating with a working video accordingly until i get tired. or you can check the Defamer link where they refer to it as an “existential cockfight” and have another video with all of them in a car)

Is this the same person? I saw a trailer for this new Ice Cube movie called “Are We Done Yet”. Basically the premise is that Ice Cube has gone family man and he’s moving from BK to CT to buy a big house that needs repairs but the house keeps falling apart and (cut to scenes of Cube in coveralls falling through the ceiling or accidentally hammering his thumb and then a can of paint falls on his head or something). It took about 2 minutes into the trailer for Young to say to me, “Hey Ice Cube is remaking that Shelly Long & Tom Hanks movie The Money Pit.” Amerikkka’s Most Wanted is probably my favorite rap album ever and one of my most favorite Bomb Squad productions. It’s surreal to see the guy who penned “The N***a Ya Love to Hate” changing diapers on the silver screen to the music of Madness (Our House).

i saw the zodiac movie. true crime isn’t my thing, but i was interested not only because he taunted police with letters and puzzles, but also because of the Bay Area setting. david fincher directed it and his flicks are usually heavy on style (sometimes to the point that it’s distracting), but this was an appropriately muted & understated film. it’s refreshing to see him showing restraint in that department and makes me have a little more respect for him. but that isn’t to say there is zero style. the whole thing is shot in murky light and fog for bogeyman vibes and there are a couple of unusual but fitting angle choices. it just isn’t the heavy-handed david fincher film everyone expects. i guess it is a little long, but still absorbing, very detailed and very intense. really depressing too. lake berryessa is probably going to haunt me for a while. if i had one complaint, it would be that bits of comic relief seemed tacked on to lighten an inherently bleak subject matter, but luckily those moments were very few.

i finally got around to watching the Minutemen doc We Jam Econo on dvd after missing two chances to see it in theaters here. aside from interviews with the usual rockumentary suspects such as ian mackaye and henry rollins, there was a lot of great live footage. i never knew there was a music video for ‘this aint no picnic.’ that was fun.

george hurley is like this strange anomaly to me. dude has ridiculous surfer hair and looks like he was born on muscle beach. on a completely superficial level, he seems so radically different from d. boon and watt and looks like the type of guy that would make fun of these nerds for being into beefheart and free-jazz records. Also because of his jockish stature, you’d think he would be this slow & powerful gorilla over the drums but he is amazingly nimble and has tons of finesse. i couldn’t stop staring at him during the concert segments because it was like it defied the laws of nature.

why is nick cage so [unintentionally] funny? i watched this many many times with tears in my eyes. I hope they invent an Oscar award for Best Running Bear Punch so he can win another.

On the walk to the BART station for the morning work commute, i saw a bunch of stuff thrown out on the sidewalk. Among a bunch of useless crud, there were two cheap frames that had posters inside. One was a poster for Federico Fellini’s E La Nave Va, practically new under the glass. So I pulled it out, ditched the frame and started walking away very quickly when a bunch of garbage men yelled at me at the end of the block asking if all that junk was mine. I kept saying “No” and the dudes didn’t hear me and kept asking “What?!” So then I had to yell “IT’S NOT MINE. I WAS JUST PICKING UP GARBAGE!!” It was too early for that.

I’ve never seen it and I’m not a big Fellini fan, but think it’s kinda cool.

it was a beautiful day sunday…

but too bad, i was hungover.

i didn’t even have much, but i guess my tolerance is shot cause i drink much much less now. so i stayed in the house all afternoon and watched all episodes of Fishing with John in bed.

this show is made for watching while hungover. My favorite episodes are when he goes to Jamaica with Tom Waits, ice fishing in Maine with Willem Dafoe and the Thailand Dennis Hopper episodes.

i have a new appreciation for Willem Dafoe. he is strange and really hilarious. dennis hopper is as fried as i expected and my favorite part was after a few minutes of silence on the squid boat, Lurie asks Hopper, “Has anyone ever told you you look like a murderer?” God. You should read Michael Azerrad’s really good essay on the series for more info/insight.

later in the evening i felt guilty about wasting the day so i did my taxes.

the 5th annual film noir festival Noir City starts this friday. i am very excited about this. i like this one more than others because they tend to screen stuff i’ve never seen before or are unavailable on vhs or dvd. i especially love the ones that are set in san francisco. it’s fun to see what the city looked like back then

in other news, i had the revelation that i should airbrush clouds on my ceiling, since it is already blue.

i know it sounds juvenile but i am that person.