Atomic: The Very Best of Blondie

I'm not a big Blondie fan. I'm in a phase right now where I've been listening to the usual suspects from the catalog, but in general. . . My sister's a big fan, but most of all I cannot-cannot-cannot listen to "Rapture" nor can I watch the music video for it. I know it's got Fab Five Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat in it, and the song references hip hop pioneers, but her rapping makes me want to scream MY GAWD WHAT ARE YOU DOING? It's too sing-songy in the cadence/flow and her voice makes the whole song feel flat and lacking. I just can't do it. Plus the video reminds me of the point in MIB when Will Smith shoots the cardboard little girl. :p (Sorry, couldn't find the actual clip. Or the right movie.) But enough of that, the other songs are excellent except that they get stuck in your head for days on end, and then you're that guy whistling "Heart of Glass" in the elevator.

Enjoy, for those of you who don't yet have it.

Atomic: The Very Best of Blondie

[picture source]

Townes

As an added bonus, it flaunts his sense of humor, whereas studio albums always flaunt his sense of impending doom (not that the two can't go together; it's just that they never did until now) [x].

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. [Steve Earle]

I've met Bob Dylan and his bodyguards, and I don't think Steve could get anywhere near his coffee table. [Townes Van Zandt]

In an effort to make your Monday night as forlorn as possible, here's some Townes Van Zandt. As I've mentioned, I have found that listening to Townes in the morning is possibly the worst way to get your day started, unless you want it to be depressing and subdued. Excellent, excellent stuff. It's big (2-disc) so I'm putting it on megaupload. If anybody would rather it split in two on rapidshare, give me a shout.

• Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, TX
  
• Buy

How much fun is it

to have Ahmadinejad visit your school?
THIS MUCH FUN!

green = route forced by NYPD. red = normal route. light blue = nypd saying can't go this way. dark blue = protests

Security security security. I left twenty minutes early for my class at the girl's school in anticipation of what would become the green route. Was still 10 minutes late. It took 30 minutes to travel that green route, which is maybe a little over a quarter of a mile. . . i however did not see the promised Secret Service snipers they had when Putin was here a few years ago.

Why I probably most likely failed my French test.

You have those fucking days where climbing Mount Everest in chainmail with five babies, a Venetian, a vengeful Spaniard, and a princess strapped to your back with dental floss would be easier than sitting down and focusing. . . ? You notice how those are always the days before a French test / big presentation / mensa test? Drawn last night at 1 am while trying to study while listening to a friend babble about Gram Parsons, the art is clearly terrible but BOY does it explain why my grade is gonna be like a Z-. Sorry. Zed. I think the plot is Babe the blue ox got turned into a giant blue vampire ox and is trying to eat a Coca Cola big rig that is parked at a rest stop/diner called "Stop." The dead bodies in Babe's mouth and hand are a clear homage to Goya's creepy ass picture of Saturn eating his progeny.

Hump Day Happy

More Vandals comin' atcha. Covering Queen, to help you get through the day.

The family had a lot of buffers!

Godfather Part II
Buy

Take the cannolis.

Sorry about that. School is turning me into a dumb-ass.

+ Best moment I've had in Little Italy? Me: The cannoli is $3, you said? Hot Italian boy: For you, tonight, it is. Haha. Me: Haha. . . ha.

Worst part?
+ Everything else. Like my broccoli ziti. My $11 broccoli ziti. My $11 microwaved broccoli ziti. Nooo. Rip me off.

Anyway, not to stereotype or nuthin. It was really the line from the movie that got me thinking about cannoli. The place across the street tries to sell you a cannoli the size of an eraser for $4. The place on my block I think sells one a little smaller for 75 cents. I had that one once. It was okay.

Mikey, why don't you tell that nice girl you love her? "I love you with all-a my heart, if I don't see-a you again soon, I'm-a gonna die..."

As visitors to this blog know, I am madly in love with THE GODFATHER I & II. and Tom Hagen., though I have still neglected III. And now I hafta take the opportunity to also highly recommend Mario Puzo's novel. Anyway, I've been wanting to watch them recently (as usual), but no time to do it, to busy eavesdropping on the neighbors outside of their doors (There ain't no eaves at Bag End, and that's a fact), so I've been lisnin to the soundtracks, which are marvelous. If you don't have them, grab 'em. I'll be posting Part I tonight and Part II "tomorrow." Enjoy :]

• The Godfather Soundtrack by Nino Rota
• Buy

WELL

Mystery solved, pretty boys & girls. The raspberry smell? Uber-rich boy's hookah. I don't in general have a problem with hookahs- I do not indulge often at all, as I don't have the whole set up nor do I have I ever entertained the notion of spending money on one, but they are admittedly much more comfortable than cigarettes. But dude- it's filling the whole effing hallway. Can't he stick a towel under his door. The smell is cloying. And I'm hearing loud sniffy snorts coming from the same room. Maybe he has a cold. Aah, sin and debauchery on the eighth floor! And Bridget's studying for an examen. Pfft.

People who smoke hookahs out on the quad on campus just end up looking like douchebags, mostly cos it looks like they're trying to defy a rule that doesn't exist. I probably just alienated the crossover group of people who read this blog and smoke hookahs on grassy knolls. I didn't mean it. Friendly people.

And you know those days when you wake up a wee bit hungover on somebody else's floor 20 minutes before class (or work, for you adults out there) and all you have time to do is run by the Asian convenience store and get the proper cure which is a yellow Gatorade and a Krispy Kreme devil's food cake donut? This morning, I'm holding a Gatorade and I smell like cigarettes and I'm peering at the area behind the counter, and the lady asks, "Are you looking for something, miss?" Me: "Do you have donuts anymore?" Lady: No.

CRASH. My world. There it goes. Bye now.

**UPDATE: hookah boy caused the fire alarm to go off this morning at 7am. Entire building evacuated. Important to note that the incident has not yet discouraged him.

The Vandals: LWIASI & HBVG

The Vandals and I still aren't talking after this summer's series of no-shows, but it was my parents' 20th anniversary last week so I sent them the song "Sorry Mom and Dad" off of Look What I Almost Stepped In. Here's the whole album, and as a bonus, Hitler Bad, Vandals Good and the "My Girlfriend's Dead" vid. There are pretty much no bad tracks on either of these records, the jokes come super fast and super crazy with the usual obnoxious sincerity and strange upliftingness. . . a pretty good place to start off if you haven't gotten into the Vandals yet. (I almost met Joe at Dodger Stadium but I didn't get to take pictures over at the All You Can Eat Pavilion where he was at.) Happy Saturday!

• Look What I Almost Stepped In
• Hitler Bad, Vandals Good
  

This one's from Hitler Bad, Vandals Good. I dunno the lesson of this video. Mayhem? Chicks dig Catholic boys? :p Frankly though, the Mighty Morning Show hasn't been the same since Dicky Barrett left.

• Barely Legal Radio [Joe's legal advice show]

Madeleine L'Engle

So I completely missed the news that Madeleine L'Engle passed away last week but now I'm quite heartbroken. I've only read the Time Quintet but that has been enough to secure L'Engles place in the pantheon; A Swiftly Tilting Planet has been one of my favorite books since I was in elementary school. They are the sort of books you can't really fall out of love with.

In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Marygail G. Parker notes “a peculiar splendor” in Ms. L’Engle’s oeuvre, and some of that splendor is owed to sheer literary range. Her works included poetry, plays, autobiography and books on prayer, and almost all were deeply, quixotically personal.

But it was in her vivid children’s characters that readers most clearly glimpsed her passionate search for answers to the questions that mattered most. She sometimes spoke of her writing as if she were taking dictation from her subconscious [source].

superbadass mix

Again, no real order, though some flow better than the others. Optimally, the theme to "Twisted Nerve" would kick off the party. I'm having a wild and crazy Friday night reading about. . . Race & Power in the Pacific War and Later Theologians in the West. Hope you're having just as much fun :]

Download [One file]

Theme from "Twisted Nerve"
Bernard Hermann [Kill Bill Vol 1]
Invincible
Ok Go [Oh No]
Fallen
Franz Ferdinand [You Could Have Had It So Much Better]
David Courtney
Rancid [Indestructible]
Liquor Store
Devil Doll [Queen of Pain]
Ain't That a Kick in the Head
Dean Martin [Dino: The Essential Dean Martin]
The Kids Are Quiet on Sharmon Palms
Lars F & the Bastards [Viking]
Alive & Amplified
The Mooney Suzuki [Alive & Amplified]
Solid Gold Easy Action
T.Rex [Hot Fuzz OST version]
Candyman
Christina Aguilera [Back to Basics]

Also, check out Jim's SFRP mix & cast your vote at the forum, if you are forum-minded. It's a great mix. It's also quite exciting to go down to do your laundry and come back in your room and hear "Cuka Rocka" playing, have no idea what's going on, but still wonder where Antonio Banderas is at.

2 Will Smith Tunes

[same file/link] Listen up for the "Rock the Casbah" piano in Will 2K. Raise your hand if you are over excited for I Am Legend.

• "Will 2K" feat. K-Ci
• "Men In Black".

The Real Winner

Jim and I are with Kanye all the way (maybe it's time to admit I still haven't gotten my hands on either of the albums :p) but Ken has a totally different idea. And so, by way of procrastination and PS Elements. . . The Eschatology of Ken:

[picture source 1 and 2.
Sorry, didn't have time to clean up the Kanye/50 picture. I'm supposed to be working.]

Speaking of important questions.

There are so many questions to ask when one lives in a dorm.

Why does the hallway smell like fake raspberries? Does "Emily" ever listen to anything besides the greatest hits of 10th grade on full blast? Who designs a kitchen with the 2 stoves right next to each other? Who designs a ladies restroom with no waste baskets in the stalls? Who stole the communal dish soap that smelled of lemons? (And damn their hide) Do you suppose the fire alarms in the room really work? The ones in the stairwell? WHO LEFT THE TWO DIFFERENT WADS OF GUM IN THE SHOWER?

[Good lord. I just learned that naive ladies like me should not image google "dorm."]

The Proposition

This was released two years ago, and those who were interested probably grabbed it, but now that the film has been out on dvd for almost a year, there are probably others casting about for the soundtrack, written by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave.

The film is bleak, brutal, and lyrical; the mood is overwhelming and stays for quite some time after viewing. It centers around the Burns Bros gang and their interaction with a settlement in the Australian Outback of the 1880s. The most compelling performances come from Ray Winstone, who offers the titular proposition, and the exquisite Emily Watson as his wife. It isn't necessary to like Nick Cave to enjoy this film, nor to enjoy the soundtrack.

All tracks are directly reproduced from the musical interludes in the film, and feature little alteration from the film score. Many songs on the album are slow-tempo and ballad-like, and the violin work of Warren Ellis becomes the central voice of the album for much of the time. Cave's unusual vocal performances on the "Rider" trilogy of songs brings a particularly haunting and uneasy tone to the album [x].

Enjoy!

• The Proposition OST
• Buy

Shoot 'Em Up!

[original picture source]

I came out of the theater trying to figure out What the Fuck I just saw and why I liked it so much. I will definitely recommend Shoot 'Em Up, especially to anyone looking for a fun movie to watch on a Friday night after a very long week. It's a positively ridiculous film, including the actors. As in Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci are ridiculously good looking. (Clive Owen. Omf.)

[F]or those who can stand the nonstop assault on their sensibilities, it's delightfully trashy, albeit irresponsible [x].

The film gets increasingly ludicrous as it proceeds. This isn't unexpected: it's called Shoot 'Em Up. But when we get to the the most ridiculous part of the movie near the end, people were enjoying themselves so much there was nothing to do but laugh, sit back, and see what in the world could possibly happen next.

What's nice about the level of absurdity is that it's fit snug into a decent if simple plot that doesn't have to stretch to shoehorn in the latest bit of silliness. It's so big and cartoonish, painted in extremes of black and white that it's difficult to resent or object to the newest cliche that's cropping up. Of course Monica Bellucci is a hooker. Of course the bad guy is a senator and an interest group. Of course he's taking a hippie van to find her. Instead of asking "why this again?", it's more like, ha! why not? And then they take it and run with it. The first scene involves a birth and the severing of an umbilical cord by shooting it. It goes from there. The film handles cliches well, and takes them on a spin.

Between shooting out messages in factory signs and playing puppets with guns, Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti convince us that even though we've seen something in this vein before (many times before) there's nothing wrong with enjoying the little quirk or twist they've added. As Lou Lumenick of the New York Post points out, it's a Elmer Fudd versus Bugs Bunny, carrots included.

I think what the trick might be (I'm not sure what the technical name is) is something in the family of the Sideshow Bob and the Rakes.

Even with all of these additions, the episode still ran short of time. This led to the creation of the rake sequence, which became a memorable moment for this episode.Originally, Sideshow Bob was only supposed to step on one rake after he stepped out from the underside of the Simpson family's car, but this was changed to nine rakes in a row.The idea was to make it funny, then unfunny and later funny again [wikipedia].

There's a point where repeated actions/ideas go from x to un-x, and then back to x. Timing is key, and Shoot 'Em Up manages to skip over the "un" for the most part. An example is the carrots. The first use is silly. The second time is predictable. By the third, fourth, and fifth and sixth time, it's not about predictability anymore. It's like waiting for Fresh Prince's Hilary's next words. What's she gonna say next? Even if it's not that funny, it's still funny. It's established in a context of continuity and reference. The fact that it happens is pleasing and fun, without regard to the actual quality of the words or actions. A specific incident is the factory sign sequence. I don't want to give much away, but what first happens is a groaner, enjoyable though it is. When the joke is extended, it gets sillier and, happily, funnier.

Go see it with a friend and on the big screen (with the caveat- IF YOU'RE INTO THESE SORT OF THINGS.) Watch Clive Owen slide around while shooting a gazillion dudes while "Ace of Spades" plays in the back. It's a ridiculous movie, and a ridiculous amount of good-natured fun. And Clive Owen is still really really ridiculously good looking.

Fall Mix

No order, just meant to be put on shuffle. It's not Autumn yet, but I'm an overeager motherfucker :] Enjoy! [One file]

Download

The Pipettes' Pull Shapes
[one of two Pipettes songs that I can listen to w.out feeling like I'm drowning in cotton candy with British accents (no offense)]
The Divine Comedy's Gin Soaked Boy
[big thanks to Jim, who so long ago posted this, got me hooked on Father Ted, and now I have the Holy Trilogy]
Regina Spektor's Fidelity
[the only song by her I've been able to make it through, I still don't like the "better"s]
The Pogues' London Girl
[this one's the bouncy one]
The Vandals' You're Not the Boss of Me (Kick It)
[the Vandals and I aren't talking right now, but I planned the mix before the Warped Tour sans official statement avec apology incident. plus the song's cute.]
Patrick Wolf's Get Lost
[this kid. you want to hate him, but the music is too good.]
Tim Armstrong's Lady Demeter
[happily, Tim's lyrics are less self-absorbed than Lars'. I think. I usually can't understand him.]
Biff Bang Pow!'s She's Got Diamonds in Her Hair
[big thanks to Twilightzone!; I have fallen madly in love with this band and especially the record this comes from, Oblivion]
Nick Caves' Henry Lee [w. PJ Harvey]
[umm, I can't think of anything to say about this. Great song, powerful song, check out the music video and watch them both make weird faces.]
Emilie Simon's Flowers
[big thanks to Ken for introducing this lovely lady to me]
The Smiths' Ask
[current favorite Smiths' song]
Adam Ant's Deutscher Girls
[reigning favorite song of theirs]
Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down
[aaw shit- so good!]
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros' Johnny Appleseed
[perfection? yuppp.]
The Cranberries' Dreams
[my friend laughed at me when I said I like this song.]
Locksley's Don't Make Me Wait
[check out their myspace for more. infectious, like OK Go with sincerity and sunshine.]
Justin Timberlakes' Lovestoned/I Think She Knows Interlude
[y'all heard about this one, already. but check out the cinematic ending, at least.]

[Picture Source, the fabulous Alphonse Mucha!]

Coney Island

Saturday's flight was the second worst flight I've been on. The first was on a tiny plane in Taiwan that experienced so much turbulence, people were puking wholesale all over the place, and when you walked out, there was vomit in the aisle. I can't even remember where we were going.

So this flight, which was supposed to be a direct flight, ended up having to re-fuel in Salt Lake City because it was too hot. That wasn't a problem. A little bumpy on the way to Utah, not too bad. We're leaving Utah, and the plane is going faster and faster on the runway, things are getting rumbly, and then we suddenly brake and start taxiing around! Panic!! Turns out they had to because somebody didn't close the fuel cover door thing. Half an hour on the runway. Then a pretty bumpy ride to JFK, reading made me motion sick, so instead I watched 4 hours of ANTM, a season I don't really like. Nothing else was on. Caught some of a Mets game and most of the new Fantastic Four movie. It's terrible how spoiled all this sounds but remember, JetBlue has good prices plus televisions. By the time we landed, my brain felt like mush. Then 40 minutes for the bags, 20 minutes for a cab (another student asked me to share a cab, as it's $45 to anywhere in Manhattan from JFK). I get to my room, which is quite nice, and my collegeboxes (stored stuff) haven't arrived. And they still aren't here. I have no cooking utensils, no towels, no books, and so forth. I spent 3 hours at Target yesterday, which is more time than anyone should ever be at Target.

But today was great fun. Two friends and I went down to Coney Island to walk on the beach and go to the aquarium. I hate to say it, but the aquarium isn't worth anywhere near the admission, but it was fun all the same. I didn't see any of the promised sea otters and penguins, and little kids kept grabbing me. There was a giant walrus, though. Very crowded, but what do you expect for Labor Day weekend. Then we hit up Chinatown so I could buy some things, including my favorite Asian raisin bread. They have some lotus paste with egg moon cakes, which are my favorites, but they're a little pricey. Maybe my mother will send me some :p When in doubt. . .

This is a charming game called "Shoot the Freak," where you literally shoot a dude in body armor who I assume is being paid to do it.

There was some sort of police convention going on, or something. There were about 7 squad cars, and they were towing away a SUV.

Maybe they were investigating this double-stuffed animal-homicide. The dark side of Coney Island. And you thought you'd seen it all in Requiem for a Dream.

I hope everybody had a good weekend/holiday!