April 2006 Archives

She Wants Revenge "Red Flags and Long Nights" 2006
Oh man. My band mate, Catherine Bates and I got comped a few months ago by Geffen to the Electric 6 show at Bowery. Free drink tickets in hand we made our way to the completely empty VIP balcony, prepared to be ironic.
Some by-the-numbers NYC band, I think it was Rock Kills Kid opened to a throng of nodding friends and associates, the She Wants Revenge started setting up their stuff. I had forgotten they were opening too, and I was eager to mock them, as I had read nothing but shit talk on the ole Internet for this "indie" (Major Label) band. The main things I heard were:

1)Far beyond Interpol's wildest dreams of Joy Division rip off. With a name like "She Wants Revenge" and song titles like "Tear you apart", it was mimicry enetering the territory of satire.
2)An unfortunate combination of JD riffage and songs about wanting to bang out chicks.
3)Made by band wagon pretenders. Apparently the two main guys were trying to make it as hip hop stars in the 90s.

A multitude of 18 year old B&Ts came pouring in to see them play. They knew all the words. As me and Catherine laughed and laughed and as I drank more and more something sinister started blossuming inside me. I started to get in to it. I heard a neighbor listening to it a few days ago and I buckled and picked it up. Bottom line, this is the only actual guilty pleasure I've ever had. I can't even explain why I like it. It IS NOT GOOD. IT IS BAD. What is wrong with me?

PS: Does this sound like DOOM music to anyone else?

Radio 4 "Dance to the Underground" 2001
Off the top of my head, aside from a few Basement Jaxx songs, this is the only other cut I can think of that makes me feel shame to listen to, that I own. This song seemed really rad in college, but now sounds really dated. I believe this song has a great future in car commercials for years to come.

Sorry everyone, I swear I'm still cool.

Dear Internet Users That I Know Personally,

Please stop sending me forwards. The story about Winston Churchill's life getting saved by the inventor of penecillin who was in turn saved by Churchill's dad or grandpappy or whatever, it's bullshit. It doesn't even make a good FAKE story. If you believe it, you are stupid. And if you think it's uplifting or interesting enough to pass on, then your emotional maturity level has just disqualified you from friendship with me.

Pronounced: Weeeeeeeeeeee, as if about to go on a rollercoaster.

God help us all.

This will not bode well in Scotland, me thinks.

Disclaimer Sphere was shitty Michael Crichton book, not be redundant.

Going through the logs for thatsplenty, one of the top visits was from sphere.com, which is odd, since visitors usually get named like dh114.umass.edu or email.bumblebeesinmymouth.net and the like. So, a trip to Sphere shows a spartan page with a few links and notes that the beta is closed, and they went over their bandwidth allowance. I read through the links, and skimmed the goddamn podcast.

A small aside, Sphere is ranking as the 28th top visitor of over 3500 for thatsplenty at .33% of our traffic. Also, our biggest search engine draw spyspace and variations for Sam's SpySpace at about 75%, with mustache tattoo coming in 2nd at 1% for Karen's Tattoo Taunts. I'm happy to say number 3 is bagina for my stunnning masterpeice of misc. (Bagina is .67%)

Sphere is poised to be the ultimate blog search. Currently, there's technoratti and the like that do a sort of brainshare of blogs, but not a real spidercrawl. Google Lab's blogsearch gets the job done, and seems to be updated as frequently as Google News and usually almost no spillover in results between the two. You can sort by relevance and date. What sucks is the ammount of forums that get tagged as blogs, and the way that web spam defeats google works the same for the blogsearch, so lots of crap repeat entries. Still, when the Game Informer Red Steel Nintendo Revolution article got leaked, the orig. blog entry was down within minutes, with the qausi-blogs like Joystiqand Kotaku linkings and reporting, but not actually hosting the article scans. Blogsearch to the rescue (though with hindsight, going to flickr and searching for red steel yielded better results.) Hot blog entries + plagarism = great redundancy for breaking news.

Sphere is being built from the ground up. Identified spam is sent to the bottom of results. Livejournal entries with lots of personal pronouns get 2nd tier citizenship (will I be able to turn off livejournal/myspace/friendster blogs entirely? PLEASE) by using content semantic analysis. Super brief entries are penalized, while verbose, beefy entries get a small tug to the top (Slashdot gives +1 to really long posts, and I've personally never seen this abused, but I'm sure there will be some noise to the signal.) Nonsense, bad spelling, bad grammar will probably hurt your listing. Like google, it will look to see who links to you, but do to the odd way blogging fits in with journalism, I see a weird battle between the topical vs. the temporal, like google's sorting options. One of the more interesting things they seem to offer is the scope. They mention baseball, which while horrible boring, seems to have its fans. With a little more effort than an I'm Feeling Lucky button, you can define...spheres... of interest, in case you just want to follow a certain player (shift to topical) or a certain players current ongoing trade/drug abuse scandal (shift to temporal) and the hidden blog communities that share interests in your topic through click-hops.

Of course, you can always wait 4 hours and find it on BoingBoing.

Still, I find it interesting they are already routing through us, which most of are traffic being myspace whores, incestious ThatsPlenty kinfolk and the odd Bagina researcher. With the exception of the Gothamist quasi-link, we've not really been on any radar, some forum posts and my IM spamming friends notwithstanding. Something to watch and wait for perhaps. I'm trying to find someone with a beta and see what's the diggity firsthand.

Oh, search engine optimization for good results/defeating spam is kinda sad, as it seems to be a bit like building on Mexico City. It's sinking, goddamnit.

Imagine if Graham hosted a show about videogames.

Also, there's a 17 year old girl with pirated DS Import games.

This New York Magazine article about late 30s and 40-something wannabe hipsters made me laugh. Don't they know how LAME-O everyone who's actually young and cool think they look in their designer rippy jeans and fake-o vintage tshirts? Who are they rebelling against, themselves?? Those dorks. (Sorry if you're reading this and you're late 30s and you've got a messenger bag and you're trying to raise your kids to like the Decemerists and the YYYs, but you should read this article too. At least have a laugh at yourself with us.)

LINK

Glass Candy & The Shattered Theater "Love Love Love" 2003
Now that the YYY's sophmore album officially suX0rz, Glass Candy's naysayers might give them another look. Unfortunately for Glass Candy's Ida No, post Yeah Yeah Yeah people trashed her for "copying". Little do these people know that Glass Candy had 3 releases before the YYYs played their first show. Anyway. This song is rockin. PS: Everyone in Glass Candy is h0ttttt.

The Flesh Eaters "Digging My Grave" 1981
In my version of histroy, there are two LA punk bands. X, and these guys. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't have saxophone in your punk band you are a bunch fags. You hear me Dead Kennedy's? If you can find A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die buy it. Its out of print and way too good.

Link for more awesome tattoos drawn with the super safe blacklight reactive ink. It's neat.

This weekend Dylan showed me the Adidas Adicolor animation for "Pink", which is really great. Adidas commissioned 6 animators to create shorts inspired by 7 colors: pink, white, black, blue, green, red, and yellow. So far I believe white is the only other one that is completed. These animations are supposed to promote Adidas's Adicolor sneakers, which are basically white sneakers you get to color with markers! Whoopie! The novelty! I like that so many mainstream companies have been looking to animation lately, because I think, and I'm sure you will agree, the advertising market can always use a quality boost, and the Pink animation is great, but it sure as heck doesn't make me want to buy sneakers I can color on. (and if i did, I'm pretty sure I'd get some white sneakers at Payless for $10 and a couple of sharpies rather than shell out the $75 clams for the name brand.) (Note: The image you see at the right is some sort of delux set that does not represent the dopey marker set I'm talking about. I just think this image is ridiculous and this set isn't even for sale yet but if it ever is it will probably cost about a swillion dollars and boy I find it obnoxious.)

Anyway! I digress. This post isn't supposed to be sneakers. It's about a musician, and his name is Greg Weeks. Learn it. Love it.

should have been titled
"revised bits of my last book
plus a few new things"

While doing my normal Zelda scavenging, I came across an interesting fact that Ravel's Boléro was going to be the orig. title theme to the first Zelda game. Nintendo decided not to liscense it and now we have the Zelda theme. Intrigued, I hit up soulseek for Borelo, realized I had spoonerized the r and the l, and was on my way. I d/l'd a few dif versions, all about 15 minutes long, but one weighed in at 6 minutes, and cuts the slow buildup straight for the sex. Indeed.

WMP. still my sampler tool before music gets ituned away, d/l this pretty picture of one Vanessas Mae. Intrigued and in search of a thesarus, wikipedia told the tale of a Linda McCartnyish violin player - an average musician selling sex appeal in the world of classical violinists. But the best part was she has a grudge match with a Finnish violinist, Linda Brava, who is said to be a better violonist and posed for playboy. A google image search confirmed. I don't know. They both seem sort of plasticy in that dead-kittens-posed-for-greeting-cards sorta way. Oh, and vaguely related: Condoleezza Rice is a concert pianist.

Funny, the Bolero was a wildly popular song, and the snare drum up top has been assimilated into popular culture, but I have feeling the Zelda theme, the replacement, may be known to more people. Or at least more people that are going to be alive in 3 years. Zelda: Ocarina of Fucking Awesomeness had borelo in the fire temple, which is nice. I wonder if it was the song with the Islamic chanting that had to be taken out in the grey cartridge. Anyone?

Oblivion came out earlier this month for XBOX 360, and PC(and I suppose Macs, bootcamp anyone?). After playing it for a month I'm no where near completing it, but I assure you, this is the big one. Have you been waiting for the Citizen Kane of interactive entertainment? This is it friends. Read on as I review the greatest video game ever made.

Talk Talk "Life's What You Make It" 1986
Today's theme is music to wake up to, and music to go to sleep to. Put this Talk Talk track on real loud as you drink your coffee and get ready for a day full of awesome. Could also be put to effective use in a training montage.

Prick "The Universe" 2002
Prick lost their record deal with Interscope after what I can only imagine to be dissappointing sales of their incredible, highly underated, way ahead of its time, self-titled debut in 1996. They put out a new record in 2002 titled "The Wreckard" (Get it?) on their website. This is the closing track, and is sweet before bed music. Also good for a suicide montage.

I don't know why I'm even linking to their myspace page. Their songs aren't great. Most of em aren't even good. That being said, I can say without a doubt that Denmark's The Blue Van is one of the greatest rock bands that has ever lived. So, if you check out the tunes online and are unimpressed, I won't blame you. This is one of those things that has to be experienced live. I'm not the only one. I saw them last night at Shindig, and they blew the place up. So, the show on sunday at Mercury Lounge is probably going to sell out, but follow these fuckers around. You have to see it.

Joshua over at Roadside Picnic has put up his new monthly updated section of submitted field recordings. This month's theme is Silence. Check it out

Remember when I was all like, Waaaa waaa, there's no good blogs for girls, they all make girls look like pink sparkley pony loving, barbie doll rainbow kitten kissing, butterfly heart charm bracelet ribbon wearing bffs? (if you don't, here you go, knock yourself out. But today, (fanfare of trumpets sounding) I found a great girl blog. Okay, admittedly, it's not a gadget blog, but it's so much better. It's a science blog. The three girls (based in London) who write it are experienced science journalists, and they're trying to launch a new popular science magazine aimed at women, but while that's in the works, they're busy blogging 'ideas, research, drugs, foods, fads, politics, gadgets and gizmos that change our lives, make us smile, make us angry or do all three.' (From an interview in The Londonist It's called Inky Circus (www.inkycircus.com). It's written silly like many a blog, but you can tell these girls know what they're talking about. (and they look so young in the picture!) I wish I done did some smart scientifical thinking thoughts bloggering.

This would be nice to be able do on command.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9019&feedId=online-news_rss20

What follows is a bunch of boring updates about my life. Proceed with caution...
Continue reading Weirdness from the front.....

The doorman or custodian or somebody, a tan-skinned elderly man wearing a puffy red and blue Adidas jacket, grinning below a trim Hitler moustache, wouldn't let me back in.

"The elevator is locked," I said.

He giggled and nodded, pointing to the keyholes.

"Can you let me in to the third floor?"

Still life with astroglide

More after the jump...

Last night, Dylan and I were hanging out at my apartment in Williamsburg, and we decided to take a walk along the waterfront. I've lived there for almost 6 months, and had still never walked to the waterfront. We walked to the abandoned Domino Sugar Factory, the tiny little "park" at the end of Grand Street, walked down numerous construction truck paths, and trespassed behind an emormous building and found a quiet spot with a perfect view of Manhatten and no sound but the sound of the water. I didn't feel like I was in a city at all. The longer and farther we walked, the less people we saw. We spent about an hour without ever seeing a soul, and this is a mere 3 blocks from Williamsburg's Bedford Avenue, an overpacked stretch constantly choking on hipsters shopping, eating, biking, and looking ultra-cool. Three blocks down, and we were in what I imagine Williamsburg was like before young artists like myself started taking over. Industrial biuldings, smokestacks, the sound of the window and glass factory machines cranking, streets literally crumbling into the water, and nighttime desolation. But soon, even the quiet waterfront will be another Bedford Avenue.

I am an assistant editor today. Today, this means spending the entire day scanning pages torn from magazines. The pages all have Paris Hilton's face on them. Yesterday, it meant transcribing an interview from a quicktime file. Tomorrow, it will probably mean more transcriptions.

Today, a college flunkout could do my job. The only reason I am doing what I'm doing is because it's not yet profitable to create, produce, and market an automated solution to scanning lots of documents. The job requires no skill or intelligence, just a pair of human hands to switch pages and press the button marked 'SCAN.'

I have just, again, switched documents and pressed 'SCAN.'

And again.

In between scans, I have about one minute. Literally, it takes about sixty seconds to scan one page.

That is just enough time to read a page of a novel. I have finished one today.

That is also just enough time to write a couple of sentences. That is what I am doing now.

It is not enough time to go to the bathroom, have a conversation, watch a trailer, or read a news article.

I have just enough time to do something small and interesting, but not enough time to work on anything else.

I think that today I will think up interesting and hilarious ways to get fired from this job.

Don't you hate that creepy feeling of Jesus reading your book over your shoulder? Or Jesus shouting annoying cheers when you're trying to work out? Jesus is With You Always although I could help but notice that he's never with a whore.

Albinos are so hot right now.

Link and another link
Brought to us from the great Proceedings of the Athanasius Kirscher Society

The intrigue: I heard the movie Hard Candy is so intense that it made some guy pass out at the Angelika. And people have been walking out in the middle of the movie in disgust and horror. After tonight's viewing, my summation is the movie was well acted, but not upsetting. It was decent watch, but that's where it ended for me. I felt like it used the sensationalism of pedophilia and exploited it to shock audiences, but the resulting film felt pretty empty. If you're going to make a movie about something like pedophilia, have some balls about it.

Conclusion: man who passed out, definitely a pedophile.

This is from the Japanese only DVD Silent Hill Lost Memories DVD. If the movie can have this much monster rape I'll be a happy man. Don't let us down Avary.

Alt version set to some queen song: http://youtube.com/watch?v=a0Cbx1WW8HU&search=queen%20silent%20hill

So as we've said, Dylan and I just got back from the sunny beachy shores of Boston! You should see my wicked tan.
One of the highlights of the week was the MIT Museum. I'll admit, I was hesitant at first (I imagined row upon row of framed mathematical equations), but I am so glad I went. It was awesome! First of all, it only cost $2 to get in, second of all, it was totally empty, and third of all, it was really cool.

My personal favorite part of the museum was the Arthur Ganson exhibit. If you don't already know his work, he creates kinetic machines that are either motor powered, or are wound up by the viewer. They are beautiful, you can see every gear and sprocket working to make something move, and somehow, his sculptures never look mechanical; they move fluidly, almost organically, and are totally mesmorizing. Most of them have a great touch of humor.

Dylan filmed one of the sculptures with my digital camera, and I'm going to try my hand here at a little something I like to call embedded video. I'm very excited about it. What you are about to see looks like a tiny wishbone sauntering along, appearing to pull a clanking contraption behind it. (if the camera work sucks, you know who to blame, he really needs a lesson in focus). You can see the professional video of this here, along with videos of his other works.

(For serious, Boston blogging on the way...I just wanted to embed a little video action, and I'm still on the wait for Google to verify that it's not porno) But I am so excited about this, Phantom Buffalo is back! Phantom Buffalo is a band from Portland, Maine, formerly know as the Ponys (not to be confused with the Chicago-based garage rocky Ponys...which is why they changed their name). Anyway, they put out one album, Shishimumu, which became my anthem album last year. The production on this thing blows my mind. To me, it's one perfect song after another. The instruments are weaving and intertwining together in a way I can't even reference another band to explain. The vocals are smooth and flowing on top, and the more you listen, the more you discover underlying melodies. Sweet lord, I freaking love them.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nup3UHG_UKU&search=bennington%20collegehttp://youtube.com/watch?v=Nup3UHG_UKU&search=bennington%20college

If you were a high school senior and saw this..... I don't know.... I think the symposium may have made most of the pretty pretty people leave.

I'm simply titilated about this. Of course, the guy who made the shirt (oh, I've already mentioned this) did the cover for the XX ep Fleshlettes.

Hmm... interesting interview: Jamie Stewart is single. Caralee will sing more on the next album (She does Helsabot aces live.) New album about hurting people instead of being hurt. Sam, you ever do more of that "i'm an asshole boyfriend" album?

So yes, we went to Boston and totally rocked it's world. (it wasn't very hard). We have many things to blog about, and I swear, Thats Plenty, we talked about you the whole time. To tide you over, here are some fun touristy snapshots.
some bridge and some door.

Hey kids, my band The Kiss-Off has a show tonight at Fat Baby at 10pm, drop by if you are around.

Seriously though, I was on vaction with fellow blogger and girlfriend Michelle, and well, we were doing other, ahem, important, ahem, non-blogging things. But like the south "WE SHALL RISE AGAIN!". Or is it, like the south " WE SHALL DRINK A BUD AND CHASE THAT THREE LEGGED DOG FROM NEXT DOOR" I can never remember.

I have a friend here, who would like to talk to you about diabetes....

I swear to god. I've got things cooking, things to share. I've got pictures of a shoot I worked on with the new ARRI D20 camera, ARRI's first video camera. An ARRI video camera, that's right. Crazy, I know.

I've got pictures of the Tennis Hoes vs. Golf Pros party, too.

I've got stories of long days on set and my latest bank balance after working for nearly a month of seven-day weeks. It's shocking. Honest!

But not right now. Right now I'm busy, I'm actually writing to you from work, and nobody knows I'm blogging. We've got clients arriving in an hour and a half and the office is a mess. The space is ages away from being ready for a shoot, but I'm still blogging. It's because I miss the site, I miss you guys and I hope you miss me. I keep checking that's plenty, but I haven't seen anything new for a couple of days.

Anyway. I hope to talk to you all soon.

I actually promised myself and told my boss that I needed two days to attend to my own business. But I got called in on this emergency. That's the way it goes.

Someday soon I'll have a day off. Someday soon, I promise.

It's already been so long since I've had time to get my life together that every dish in my apartment is dirty. I drink soup straight out of the can like a beer. I drink orange juice in the morning by pouring myself shot after shot in the collectible Budapest shotglasses Karen brought home from a trip to Hungary. I fork the lettuce in the salads karen makes by making a fist around four or five chopsticks and stabbing the leaves. I eat ice cream straight out of the carton without a spoon by squeezing the bottom of the pint and licking the bucket-shaped "scoop" that pops up.

My laundry is long, long overdue. Even after a shower, the crotch on my unwashed pants smells so strongly of ballsweat that Moksi sniffs at my junk as though carefully reading my genetic history. He is fascinated, captivated, enraptured by my stink. I have never seen him so fascinated, so preoccupied. He is focused on my balls, with the concerned concentration of a grand master playing tetris.

I will have a day off soon.

It feels good when he touches rusty spoons with his salad fingers.

Salad Fingers, Episodes 1-6

Woah, was going through an old harddrive and what do I find, but my blog entry from Ruben's semiotics class.... let the good times roll. so, if Thomas Pynchon, semiotics, book covers, or Odin interest you, read on brave reader. I sez so. Special guest comment by Tim Veras!

The Museum of Hoaxes has a great list of the 100 best April Fool's jokes of all time. I know it's 2 days late, but is it really ever too late for practical jokes? Especially with such gems as the number 4 best joke in 1996 when Taco Bell announced they had bought the Liberty Bell, to be renamed the Taco Liberty Bell. When White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale by enraged citizens, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold, though to a different corporation, and would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

ROTFLOL!

The Museum of Hoaxes Blog is pretty great too.
100 Best April Fools Jokes
Museum of Hoaxes

Last night I found myself at the Levy (the most awesomest bar ever) and whist awaiting my dinner (a hotdog with ruffle chips and mayonnaise) I thought I'd give the pinball machine a go. I always kind of liked pinball, but was never bery good at it. Well let me tell you, brothers, Guitar Hero has changed me. It has improved my hand-eye coordination better than I ever thought possible. I was so good at pinball. Twice during my run, I had four balls launched at once. While I was pleased that I'm so good at it, I was also most discouraged by the game itself. The thing is...it's boring!

I'm moving to NYC.