Cheesy title aside it was a good little adventure. Michelle created a quick walking tour, complete with interesting neighborhood facts guarded by garden gnomes, which seemed to be everyone’s favorite part. Although I added candy to the bags so lets not discount that. We ended up at a local pub for eats and drinks.
Entertainment
Bill Hicks
April 17th, 2008You ever watch CNN Headline News for any length of time? It’s the most depressing fucking thing you will ever do. War, famine, death, AIDS, homeless, depression, recession, war, famine, death. Then you look out your window and it’s just [birds singing]. Where is all this shit happening man?
A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It’s like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant.
They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you’re high, you can do everything you normally do, just as well. You just realize that it’s not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.
My final point about alcohol, about drugs, about pornography; what business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, fuck or take into my body as long as I don’t harm another human being whilst on this planet? And for those of you having a little moral dilemma on how to answer this, I’ll answer for you. None of your fucking business! Take that to the bank, cash it and take it on a vacation outta my fucking life.
The Black Keys
April 3rd, 2008They have a new album out: Attack & Release
I’ve actually just stumbled on these guys and have only checked out a smattering of their stuff from 3 or 4 albums. It’s really good. If you smashed Led Zeppelin together with John Lee Hooker kind of. Real raw soulful stuff.
The Frames
February 26th, 2008A friend suggested The Frames to me. Coincidentally I had just stumbled upon the lead singer in the movie Once.
In their latest album, The Cost, you get some of the same songs from the Once soundtrack, but not stripped down like in the movie.
A big deal in Ireland, they seem worth the time to check out if you like guitar and lyric driven melodies.
Once
February 26th, 2008A trip to the video store so often ends in disappointment that when I stumble onto something I truly enjoy it is the most unexpected of surprises. This is such a pretty little movie. Genuine and interesting characters in a story about two people that collide in a brief and life changing encounter.
Glen Hansard (frontman for indie rock band The Frames) plays the guy, a street musician who is playing for change when he meets the girl (Marketa Irglova). The film chronicles their tentative relationship as they work out their demons through music. Lacking in all the trite Hollywood fluff typical of the romantic genre it is a pleasure to watch. Plus the soundtrack kicks ass. The movie revolves around the music the two characters make and propels the entire story. Despite that it doesn’t have an over produced feel to it. In fact it is the intimate and spontaneous nature of the songs that makes them so good.
ONCE is a simple, sweet film. I’d recommend it.
Morcheeba
February 22nd, 2008I found Morcheeba late in their career and so had the pleasure of digesting all four previous albums all at once. I loved them and so had high expectations for the latest effort. Probably too high really. The principal vocalist on the first four albums, Skye, has left the group and been replaced briefly on their fifth album by a new vocalist and again on this latest work by an eclectic group of singers. All of whom are impressive, but it’s tough not to miss the girl you fell in love with in the first place. Dive Deep is typical Morceeba, in that it is not easily identified with any particular musical style. They are kind of a hip-hop electronic dance kind of a thing.
Anyway, after giving the album a couple of listens I would say it’s decent, it does not hit the heights of some of their past work, but there are some bright spots.
I would suggest you check out any of their first four albums. The fifth (The Antidote) was disappointing . The first four are all good but Fragments of Freedom, and Who Can You Trust stand out from the group slightly.
The Black Hole Of Cinema
December 1st, 2007I just watched what may be the worst movie I have ever seen. It’s a difficult judgment to make because the wound is so fresh.
The recipe to create this pungent, pervasive, and all encompassing stench is as follows. First you need to find a director with a fetish for the eighties TV show “The A-Team”, a hero worship for Steven Segal, and a penchant for frat boy humor. You give this guy a screenplay adapted from an episode of Scooby Do and Starsky and Hutch mashed together and an unlimited supply of blank ammunition and stage blood. The result is ninety minutes of a cartoonish tough guy shooting about 200 bad guys while nonchalantly diving, flipping, and spin kicking through a plot that makes no discernible sense. The resulting film sucks so hard that light can not escape it.
The hero in this film eats carrots. It’s his thing. You know one of those quirky things tough guys in movies do. As if the obsession with the carrot was not stupid enough all alone the hero actually utilizes carrots in multiple stunts and uses carrots to kill several people in the movie. Seriously, he stabs people with carrots. Do you see what I am saying? The odor generated by this movie is eye watering.
The carrot issue does not stand alone, I could go on, I really could, but I think you get the point. By now you are actually tempted to go out and watch this thing right. It’s like driving by a car crash. You hope there is no decapitated corpse on the side of the road, but then again, if there is a decapitated corpse, you don’t want to miss it.
Not everyone agrees with me. This steaming pile received 66 % on rotten tomatoes, a site I normally consider a decent indicator of a film. Well, do as you like. Rubber neck if you choose. You will definitely be rewarded with a few hundred corpses. Bloody, oozing, spraying, disemboweled pointless and never ending corpses.
The Film: Shoot ‘Em Up (Paul Giamatti, Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci)


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