Scandal At The Parkade

Me and Alicia went to go see the new X-Files movie at a midnight showing. Amazingly, they decided to not have a midnight showing at the theatre I frequent, so I had to head out to one I don’t usually go to. It was worth it though, as the movie was quite enjoyable. A lot of reviews have been on the harsher side, suggesting that it doesn’t mesh with the spirit of the series, for example. Considering this takes place, effectively real time, years later, it’s not the nineties anymore. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the love of X-Files while it was out wasn’t just escaping from the modern age. It was a contemporary piece, and fitting with the spirit kept it contemporary. And on the point of paranoia and distrust of the government, paranoia is defined by being unwarranted.

There’s not a whole lot to spoil honestly, the episode is reminiscent of the older episodes, and is basically a glorified new episode. Interestingly despite the popularity of the old monster of the week episodes, people seemed to prefer the first movie, which was more super-arc oriented. Would I recommend this movie to people who’ve never seen the X-Files? Probably not, I do think the main appeal is for people to see something else with their favorite characters starring. There’s also a good amount of decent character interaction, yet again something best left appreciated by the true X-philes.
There was a good amount of superficial elements to get the ball rolling, almost as an excuse to have it more like a classic episode. I don’t object to this, but at the same time, there’s a lot of elements that are glazed over too much, and I could see somebody unfamiliar with the show not catching some of these important elements. Watch the series first.

Leslie’s birthday just rolled around, so I decided to take a look around for something to get her. Always tricky buying gifts, it’s much nicer to just let the items roll to you and then not waiting for special occasions. I shopped around for a few different things and decided on The Melvins’s new Nude With Boots. It’s a superb cd, the opening track is one of my favorite songs right now. The entire work is a solid setup and it’s been getting me quite in the mood for them coming soon (Me and Alicia already got our tickets!). I think Leslie was a little more excited about the cd by our old friends in Polkadot Cadaver. While I was at the shop I also saw a cd released on Web Of Mimicry. I couldn’t make out who it was supposed to be, but I enjoy most of what they’ve put out so far, so why not give it a shot? The writing was in faux-cyrillic, but my background in cyrillic made it extra camouflaged. It actually reads ASVA but for me it said DGTSD and I couldn’t figure it out. I heard demos off the cd around when it came out in 2005, and it was intriguing to say the least. I enjoy most anything Trey Spruance has worked on, but Asva is pretty far out there. There’s just something about fifteen minute ambient grindcore that I can only handle so much of.

Interestingly, both cds have something interesting going on with their physical layout. When you open up the Asva cd, the disc is on the left instead of on the right. I don’t know why they did this, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The Melvins though, they seem to have put the front artwork in what is normally where the back artwork goes, and the booklet, which is now in the back, has the tracklist written on the front. This allows for slightly bigger, clearer artwork. And honestly, I do flip over every cd pretty quickly to see the tracks, maybe I’d be more interested in seeing that first, and then checking out the artwork. In terms of logic, it does seem to make more sense sticking the lyrics and liner notes with the track list rather than off by themselves.

There’s not a whole lot on the calendar right now, but it’s a decent time for an update I guess. First off, Buckethead is playing with That 1 Guy, and I just bought my ticket for that. It’s hard to write too much about Buckethead because he’s the kind of guy who locks himself in a room with only his guitar and stuffed animals to write 27 albums. I’m hoping though there’s a good Bucketheadland blend of things during the show; I could see his material blending together some, especially with a longer set. I guess Tiffy is going to see him, but not the same show I’m going to. Alicia won’t be going though Robert said he might go with me to the show, but it’s on the pricy side, I paid $18.50 with charges. As long as I get all eight fingers, some funky bootsy beats, nun chuka kata shredding, and some colma guitar, it’ll be worth it. Also, he should do the robot, and break out his nunchaku.

Henry Rollins is coming as well, and I’ve seen him a whole slew of times, but I guess he’s doing a wrap up of the presidency of Bush, and I’m always curious to hear what he has to say. My oratory also greatly increases in quality after I see him, so I can look forward to that as well. If anybody happens to want to replace my copy, I owned Letters To Rollins, and I don’t anymore and I’d really like it back.

Around that same time, Mindless Self Indulgence will be coming around. The new album is enjoyable enough, but Never Wanted To Dance is the clear highlight. Hopefully they’ll play some of the other hits, or rather, songs that I learned to particularly like for whatever reason. They may’ve pioneered the whole Hot Topic thing, but there’s not a whole lot of stuff similar to MSI I feel, so it’s nice to get some different things in there.

Last and certainly not least, SNFU is coming pretty close, so I think I’m going to try and make the trek to see, well, at this point, one of the guys who invented the music I grew up listening to. Even if the membership is quite different, and arguably it’s not the same band at all, I’d still rather see a questionable SNFU than no SNFU at all.

I love Gillian Anderson. If anybody wants to get me an early Christmas present…

I wish I had some money for this.

Ooh, I can’t wait for the movie. I think I need to remind Alicia, Joe, and Robert that they all must accompany me or incur some wrath.

Adultswim Fix seems to not have any Metalocalypse, so I moved on right to the main course. The Venture Bros. Awesome.

The Monarch is back, I was very happy to see; they haven’t been doing too much in the vein of main arch building. I don’t like the lack of the intro though. 3/8th of the way through the episode, I’m quite happy with it. A lot of the jokes aren’t obscure references, they’re just clever, some of them are classic bits. I like references, but I like variety. Helper’s electronic beat is enjoyable as well, especially since it’s bettering what, to this point, seems to be the less interesting part of the episode, Hank and Dean of course. The music is also enjoyable as they enter the monarchmobile.

Shirt theory number 1:

A Monarch shirt. I really want one. I have a great idea for a design, and a variation. If it were actually just a Monarch style butterfly, I think this might take the slot, but I don’t foresee this happening.

Shirt theory number 2:

I really don’t expect this to be the shirt, but I don’t see too many random shirt logos in the show, like say, Triana’s. Perhaps a Lip Glossary or Goat Blood Sacrifice shirt? Again, not super likely, but who knows.

Shirt theory number 3:

They did take the time to name the episode after him. It could be anything. Dean!

Shirt theory number 4:

I think this would be a pretty nice shirt. I’m going to make this my pick, but I’m tired.

While I’m sure Alicia will have several to choose from, I foresee a decent selection now for me and Robert as well.

Edit: Now that I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, I’m leaning towards the Monarch logo. This was almost exactly parallel to how the shirt of The Triad played out. Also, the newspaper one isn’t that great of a logo after all. It being something a little left-field is the next most likely I’d say.

Comic book movies are obviously something I’m big on. There have been a lot lately, but not too many in overall history. Recently, I’ve seen Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, Hancock. I will probably soon see Hellboy 2, and Wanted. Punisher is something I’ll also attend. They’re branching out now too, which is interesting. Dethlok is something I’m not amazingly excited about, but I’ll probably give it a chance.
I can even be excited about Avengers movies, and Magneto, The Spirit, and other some-such, but that I want to see is Elfquest.

I already told Alicia that we’re going to see this.

Ever a fan of the comic book movie, I headed out to see the new Batman movie. Well, first I listened to Bat Macumba by Os Mutantes to get in the mood. After a quick resolution of ticket issues, me and Alicia and Joe all went down to the movie. Bob was supposed to join us, but fandan-went his tickets, and he and Sarah had to see it in some other theatre. Robert was awl in nyc, and didn’t make it either. In fact, a whole slew of steers, compeers, and queers were in rank at the cinema. It could’ve been a spectacle in either direction, but it wound up being pleasantly isolate.
Joe and I hoped to purchase some bucket masks and Joker them up some, but there aren’t too many party stores open past 11 pm.

Heath Ledger is amazing in the movie, his intermittent presence, his dialogue, his posture and mannerisms, were dead on. Err. Since I wrote that accidentally, I’ll keep it. Really though, he’s the high point of the movie.
A surprise appearance by The Scarecrow had me quite excited, since he’s one of my favorite rogue’s gallery figures.
For a summer blockbuster action movie, it kept me pretty guessing; a few specific tricks in the movie are quite enjoyable in retrospect, because they allowed a great evocation of emotion that would otherwise be impossible, and tied you better into the film. There’s a lot of great psychological elements that I wish were fleshed out just a bit more though, which probably could’ve happened since the movie is over two and a half hours long. Luckily, there really wasn’t any point though were I felt like it was dragging on, at least as a whole.
The “Batman voice” was something that I wasn’t amazed with, but it rarely infringed on enjoyment. The only big negative is that for a movie so oriented on this hard-boiled dark underbelly of crime and super-villainy, there were a lot of bad puns regarding Two-Face, mostly prior to him becoming the villain. On the humor point, like with most movies, I think each time I laughed, nobody else was laughing.
Also noteworthy, I’m not huge into spectacle, but the fights and explosions mixed with the complexity of parts like Joker’s escape balanced out splendidly.

There was a trailer for Watchmen during the previews as well. Unless your computer has the same ailment as mine, you can watch it here. I believe every scene in there, at least that I remember, directly corresponds to the comic. This might be a good thing.

X-Files is in less than a week!

After exchanging largesses, Alicia and I went to go see Boris play. We wound up missing the first band Nachtmystium, I guess, due to our work schedules. I didn’t like them from hearing their cd, so I doubt I would’ve liked it so much live.
Torche was enjoyable enough, and definitely gave me a higher opinion of them from seeing them perform. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see them, but if they came around, I wouldn’t be surprised if I went to see them again.
Boris themselves were epic, we were front row, just slightly to the right. I had been listening to Smile for the past few days almost uninterruptedly, and that was definitely the right idea. They played all of Smile, Floor Shaker (!), and I believe Pink was the only other song they did. Smile was pretty much in order, with Pink and Floor Shaker in the middle. They played no encore, which I enjoyed as well, because I’d rather just hear them play a longer main set, then feel like we got something special. I’m not trying to say bands should stop when the crowd is rioting for them, but barring pretty intense crowds, a regular set with an extra song in the main body is preferable to me.
Alicia and I each got shirts. Hers was red on black, it said Boris and had a pentagram or something of the sort on there. Mine was:

Alicia got me the Chemtrails 7″ which is available only at select indie record stores and with a purchase of Modern Guilt. The b-side to Chemtrails is a song called Vampire Voltage No. 6, which has a Modern Guilt feel to it, and then completely rocks out at the end. It’s well above par for a b/w track. The sleeve to Chemtrails isn’t the most thrilling, but it could’ve been in a blank sleeve easily.

Incidentally, since I can’t really post a picture of a mix I made, I decided I would just mash this other post right into this one:

In anticipation for Beck’s new album, I pulled out all of the best recent Beck tracks and made myself a mix called “Beck: Revisited.” It’s all studio tracks, all released recently, and doesn’t feature any album tracks from The Information or Mellow Gold Deluxe. I did start with Timebomb, which predates The Information, but is an odd little fellow by itself. The remainder of the tracks are covers of Daniel Johnston, Lee Hazelwood, and Nick Drake. It’s a little odd with Timebomb at the beginning being so different from the rest of the album, but I did pull off the instrumental version and the unused remix of Nausea that XXXChange did for Information Delux and it seemed to work.
Personally, and to the amazement of Robert, I love Beck’s quieter folksy side more than his electro-funk hip-hop; some of his best tracks in my mind are Puttin’ It Down, One Foot In The Grave, and Atmospheric Conditions. Sadly, I’ve never seen Beck, and I’m not sure when and if I’ll get the chance. He’s not coming around my neck of the woods according the tour dates he has up right now at least.
Track list:

• Timebomb
• True Love Will Find You In The End
• Forget Marie
• Which Will
• Parasite
• Pink Moon

The last three tracks were ordered based on the track number that was on the file I got, which flowed nicely enough. True Love… was from a Daniel Johnston tribute album back in 2004. Forget Marie appeared on his site in summer 2007 pretty soon after Hazlewood passed away, which I believe he had recorded, along with some other covers, not too long before. The three Nick Drake covers popped up on Beck’s discobox sometime half-way between Guero and The Information, late 2005, leading me not to know what to expect from The Information.
Yes, most of these tracks came out before The Information was released, but I hadn’t heard anything that I liked as much as these since then, and this mix proved to set the right mood for Modern Guilt.

My friend Liz asked me to make her some cds to expose her to new things. I think I focused a little more on the visual element than I probably should’ve, when I could’ve been trying to come up with things I think she’d be more particularly interested in musically. The first design I did for her was for Mike Patton’s Pranzo Oltranzista, a great cd to play for your friends in the dark. Here’s a couple pictures of the design.

It’s hard to make out, even in real life, but the cover reads “Pranzo,” and the second pictures is of the tracklist which has this nice staggered layer thing going on. Since I gave them to her, I don’t have better pictures, or pictures of some of the other parts. The inside cover said Musica Da Tavola Per Cinque, and the slip to hold the cd had bat wings and some spooky yellow windows. I was really happy with the final look of it, but it did have a few flaws, namely the slot for the cd was a little too tight, and the look of the cd itself was unimpressive. I wanted to go for a look with eyes peering through the aforementioned fenestrae, but it didn’t work out quite as planned. I have some diagrams I might post in the future.

I just made a somewhat similar design for Alicia to celebrate seeing Boris, she has it right now, but I’ll borrow it back to take some pictures of it.