Big Red Robot * It's Hip To Be Square

Challengers of the Unknown

2011-03-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

It's March. Here's the new mix, Challengers of the Unknown.

"Another boxer on the cover?" Hey, I'm just as surprised as you are.

Download it here. More on the Master List.

***Cover art is a detail from "Richard Humphreys, the Boxer", by John Hoppner, 1788.

Fight or Flight

2011-02-01T09:55:00.001-08:00

February! Hey there! New mix. The title was suggested by the one and only Reluctant Hero, who has a great blog. You should totally follow him. I'll work the other two suggestions in some time, as they were all pretty great. And if you ever have any ideas for titles, shoot them my way, okay?

Anyway, the mix. It's a weird, wobbly thing. It's all neon-colored and grimy, like the oil rainbow in a puddle or like the aura coming off that weird guy in the back of the bus. Psychedelic burnout fantasies from across the chronoheliosphere. Sort of a cousin to Electric Freak Out from a couple of years back.

Get it here, or just click the picture above, and, as always, there are more mixes to be found on the Master List. Thanks for listening, and feel free to share it with your friends, co-workers, lovers, pets, fellow inmates, therapists, or that weird guy in the back of the bus. Sharing = caring.

Here's the tracklist:

"I've payed my rent and I've done my time and it's gone on much too long."
"If we agree they're there, they're there; alive and shorn."
"Note the hours, how they drag 'til the night-time comes 'round."
"You're a girl of rainbow snow."
"And that's a good thing, that's a good thing for you."
"And I'll share your sleeping bag if I might."
"Keep ringing against the walls with a hollow song."
"They call when you are sleeping, they shake your hand downtown."
"[At infinity of the fifth celestial galaxy]."
"Right beneath the sign with the dusty yellow stars."
"Nobody knows what's going on in my mind but me."
"We're gonna melt away like apples in the ground."
"She singled me out, single-handed took me alive."
"It takes a year to make a day."
"I was adrift in a dreamworld."
"Is this real, what I see?"
"You can't run away."
"Stones deformed by gentle kissing."
"Baby, it's a thrill."
"Now that the parachute has opened, well, don't it make you feel good?"

Year's Not Long

2011-01-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

January's mix is up; titled Year's Not Long.

Tracklist:

"There's someone on my mind now all the time."
"There's not enough eyeliner in this world."
"We could ride the camel. One hump or two?"
" Nothing says 'I miss you' quite like war poetry you carved in your door with a Stanley knife."
"Say you're going through a phase."
"Hey girl, I watched you dancing to the rocking bands."
" I don't wanna hang out with those teenage freaks."
"The co-dependent self-styled nightmare."
" The ghosts of graffiti they couldn’t quite erase."
"I will secretly accept you, and together we'll fly south."
"Make a cup of tea. Put a record on."
"Cause they're coming for your brain, but they will leave with your head."
"They are tiny suns infused with sour."
"I must look like a dork."
"Poor enough to eat a tree."
"My basketball team's name is 'Gay Human Bones'. We win most of the games that we play at home."
"I just had to get something off of my soul."
"All you ever do is pout."
"She has a statue inside."
"Drag me across the sky."

2010 Favorite Comics

2010-12-31T14:39:00.000-08:00

King City
Just dizzyingly masterful. Brandon Graham turns in an imaginative epic full of small moments, big monsters, great characters and just crazy, crazy stuff. The ever-reliable David Brothers does a much better analysis of what made it such a joy to read every time it showed up in my stack.

Uncanny X-Force
How did he do it? How did Rick Remender make me lovelovelove a book titled X-Force – a name that brings up images of saliva-mouthed, cross-hatched muscle-men toting ridiculously gigantic guns while garbed in a suit made entirely of pouches – featuring the already over-exposed Deadpool and Wolverine along with a bunch of other "kewl" characters (and the legitimately cool Fantomex) as the X-Men's black ops team? I don't know, but I'd be a liar if I said that this book didn't make the 13-year-old inside of me jump up and down and fist-pump forever and ever.

Afrodisiac
Dudes. Just buy it. It's beautiful, hilarious and it's by the guys who made Street Angel. You need to know nothing else beyond this.

iZombie
Chris Roberson and Mike Allred have crafted the perfect weapon to do battle against the horribleness of the Twilight saga. Zombies, mummies, werewolves (well, were-terriers), vampires, and a talking chimp.'Nuff said.

The Bulletproof Coffin
This book is so weird. Like a dayglo David Lynch superhero fever dream, Hine and Kane take a long look at comics and all their idiosyncrasies and leave you with a feeling of hopelessness. It's the anti-Flex Mentallo.

Orc Stain
James Stokoe's kind-of-sort-of fantasy tale subverts all your expectations in a purple-ish, veiny wonderland full of thieves, Flintstones-ish contraptions, swamp witches, and orc-based genital mutilation/currency. The Mindless Ones did a great podcast on the subject. Go listen to that. Then go buy the trade of the first six issues. You won't regret it.

Thor: The Mighty Avenger
Yeah, I know. Another comics fan whining about the little book that couldn't. But when you have Roger Langridge writing an accessible, all-ages book about a character I could have cared less about and making me love him and his universe, and when you have Chris Samnee drawing the heck out of every singe panel in that book, you kind of have to bellyache a little when something this special gets snuffed out in the crib. I can't say I'm shocked that a well-drawn, well-written Marvel book got canceled due to low sales, (as my Nextwave collection will attest) but I am a little disappointed. But hey, good art doesn't always win. In fact, the instances where something that is actually excellent gets wide recognition are so rare that I can't think of any. When's the last time a legitimate, all-caps, GREAT film was #1 at the box office? Or a GREAT record/song was at the top of the Billboard charts? How about on the bestseller list?

You get the point.

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
There's not a whole lot surprising in Bryan Lee O'Malley's final chapter in the Scott Pilgrim series. Like it's predecessors, it's funny, ridiculous and touching. It's beautifully rendered, well-written and populated with great characters doing really fun stuff and kissing and stuff. What more do you want in entertainment?

Daytripper
Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon's stunning mini-series about birth, death and the stuff in-between was just fantastic. It'll break you. In a good way.

Morrison's Batman books: Batman & Robin, Batman: the Return of Bruce Wayne, Batman: the Return, Batman Inc.
This run has been uneven as hell, but wowzers, it's been fun to read. Morrison manages to tie up his years-long Batman story (who knew that Final Crisis was really a Batman story?) while paving the way for the future of Batman all the while giving up some top-notch work from Frank Quitely, Frazier Irving, Chris Sprouse, and Yanick Paquette. (We won't discuss the attack of the Morrison Art Curse on ROBW and B&R) Morrison literally killed off the old, grim soldier of Frank Miller's Batman and replaced him with one poised to take over the 21st century. I, for one, welcome our new corporate Batman overlords.

Sweet Tooth
I wasn't too sure how I'd like this, a post-apocalyptic tale featuring an boy with antlers and his tough-as-nails guardian, all done up by Jeff Lemire. Yes, that Jeff Lemire, the guy who gave us sublime stories about people in small, rural Canadian towns in his Essex County books and Vertigo's The Nobody. I mean, the guy is obviously talented, but a Mad Max meets The Island of Dr. Moreau sci-fi-type book? Has he gone all Hollywood on us?

No. No he hasn't. Settle down, Dylan. Sweet Tooth is full of the same stuff that made Lemire's earlier books work so well: well-rounded characters stuck in situations they don't necessarily like or understand, making things work as best they can. Sorry I doubted you, Mr Lemire.

Jeff Parker & Gabriel Hardman on Hulk
Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. After the third cancellation of Parker's Atlas series (See my remarks on well-written, well-drawn series at Marvel in the Thor entry), the creative team shuffled over to the adjectiveless Hulk book to take over for Jeph Loeb after his two-year-ish run on the book detailing the exploits of the Red Hulk, an idea so stupid it could only come from Jeph "I Wrote Commando," Loeb.

And they knocked it out of the park. The set-up so far is reminiscent of Nextwave (the whole "gotta shut-down all these secret doomsday weapons" plot engine) and Thor: the Mighty Avenger (the whole "let's team Red Hulk up with another hero every issue to see what makes him different" thing), and it's so well-plotted and expertly drawn you forget just how dumb this whole thing started off as. In fact, in their hands, it makes perfect sense.

BRR Christmas Mixes

2010-12-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

BRR CHRISTMAS MIXES:

All remastered and ready to go! Enjoy!

A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 1: I Would Never Steal From Santa •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 2: Sleigh Bells In the Air •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 3: It's the Perfect Gift Idea •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 4: You'd Better Watch Out •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 5: K-Mart Is Closed •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 6: My True Love Gave To Me •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 7: To Heck With Ol’ Santa Claus •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 8: We Dress Up Like Snowmen •
A Big Red Christmas, Vol. 9: Got Something For You •

Good Times

2010-09-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

So I think I'm going to move a lot of my blogging over to my Tumblr, Big Red Tumblr. So you can follow me over there for the short bursts of static that comprise Tumblr blogging.

I'll still keep this live and update with posts here & there, but dang dudes, I feel guilty whenever I look at this thing, like it's looking back at me with these eyes that say, "Remember the good times, when you used to write stuff on me? Why can't we have those times back again?"

"But blog," I want to say, "those times are gone. The Internet has changed. I've changed. We can't go back to then. We can only have now. And now is … different."

But I just can't say it. Not yet.

Flying High Again

2010-09-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

It all started with Nixon. Blame him. It's September's mix, A Beginner's Guide To Levitation. Featuring tracks from 13th Floor Elevators, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, R.E.M., The Monkees, Male Bonding, The Promise Ring, Modernettes, Best Coast, Lou Reed, The Killers, Serendipity, Band Of Horses, Radar Brothers, The Feelies, Andrew Bird, Nick Drake, The Bee Gees, The Cure, Ben Folds, and Club 8. Here's the cover:

Download it here. And you can get even more mixtapery goodness by checking out the Master List.

As usual, feel free to tweet this, share it on Facebook or just send the link to a friend. Sharing is caring. Oh, and if you do, let me know and you just might get some special surprise.

The Pirates Have Learned of His Invisibility Device

2010-09-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

It's MST3K Drink & Draw time again, so get your pencils ready for Manhunt In Space, another chapter in the adventures of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger.

Movie-sign is tomorrow night, August 25th, beginning at 9 pm. Who's in?

Watch along on Netflix. Draw along with the movie. Follow along on Twitter with @theChrisHaley and @theJenya OR find all the great tweets using the hashtag #MST3kDandD. And there's always our Flickr pool for posting your drawerings.

A good time will be had by all.

15 Records & 15 More

2010-08-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

So I got tagged on one of those Internet meme things on Facebook the other day. It was a thing where you were supposed to list 15 albums that stuck with you, which, c'mon, how am I supposed to pass that up? I've done something similar here on the blog ages ago with my Desert Island Disco series, and while both lists contain a lot of the same artists, for this one I included records that were more introductory and seminal as opposed to ones I'd listen to forever if necessary. So here's my list of 15 Albums:

1. Jonathan Richman - I, Jonathan
2. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
3. The Beatles - The Beatles
4. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
5. Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
6. Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
7. The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?
8. Talking Heads - Remain In Light
9. The Beach Boys - Friends
10. The Clash - The Clash
11. Yo La Tengo - Electro-Pura
12. Sebadoh - Bakesale
13. Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
14. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
15. R.E.M. - Reckoning

And of course, as soon as I hit "Submit" on the Facebook note, I thought of another 15 or so records I could include. So here's another 15:

1. Paul & Linda McCartney - Ram
2. The Dismemberment Plan - Change
3. Beck - Midnight Vultures
4. Spoon - Girls Can Tell
5. Ganglians - Monster Head Room
6. Tom Waits - Bone Machine
7. Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
8. Old 97's - Too Far To Care
9. Super Furry Animals - Rings Around the World
10. Halo Benders - God Don't Make No junk
11. Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
12. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
13. The B-52's - The B-52's
14. Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
15. They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18

What about you? What are some informative, keystone records from yr life? Ones that you heard and said to yourself, "Yeah, that's it right there."?

Seven Evil Exes

2010-08-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

So, we saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World the night it opened and for some reason, I'm just getting around to blogging about it. It was really fantastic. Like, very, very, very good. Perfect, almost. Upon its completion, I immediately wanted to go watch it again. That's how good it is.

It has everything a movie should have: a great soundtrack, great cast, masterful direction, snappy dialogue, epic fights, and a cute love story. It looks great, it sounds great and it feels great. (It also includes the long-awaited fight between George Michael Bluth and Ann Veal that all you Arrested Development fanfic writers have been salivating over.*) And so far, it's not doing so great at the box office, with box office receipts totaling less than half of that steaming turd of a film Eat Pray love. This is terrible. I cannot let this act of aggression stand. As an enjoy-er of Things That Are Awesome, I must act.

So I am posting this in an effort to get you out of your house and into a theater to watch this movie. Because trust me, if you wait until it hits in DVD and you're watching it at home on your little TV you will be going, "Oh man! This movie's great! Why didn't I see this on the big screen? WHYYYY?!" And I will jump out from behind a plant and say, "I TOLD YOU!" And you will probably call the cops. But it will be worth it.

But yeah, go see Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. I loved it, and c'mon, my tastes are pretty impeccable, right? And if you're worried it's too dudical or if I'm already to biased about the source material (Seriously though, the comics are great, too. And yeah, I'm a pretty big sucker for Edgar Wright, but c'mon! Spaced? Shaun of the of Dead? Hot Fuzz? Spaaaaaaaaced? And yeah, I bought both the soundtrack and the score and will most likely download the game on Xbox and sure, I waited to buy the last volume at midnight at my local comic shop and I pretty much feel like if you don't like this movie you probably wouldn't like me because it's everything I think is great about movies/comics/video games all in one place…), I will point out that I saw it with my wife, who also enjoyed it lots and couldn't care less about comic book movies or martial arts movies, both of which this film shares DNA with. So there.

It's super-fun. Honest. And if you have seen it already, why not tell a friend. It pains me to see something this good and this fun and this well-made get passed over in favor of stuff like Vampires Suck or Eat Pray Love. We've got to fight for our right to awesome.

Here's the trailer.

* Is Arrested Development fanfic a thing? Initially I was joking, but now I kinda hope it is. I don't know that I want to live in a world where somebody isn't spending hours writing the further adventures of the Bluth family. It's gotta be out there somewhere, right? I mean, if people are writing Spin City or WKRP In Cincinnati fanfic, surely somebody somewhere's gotta writing the story of Carl Weathers and Tobias Fünke on a roadtrip across America to audition for the Spider-Man musical, right? Please tell me this is so, otherwise, well, you know what I'll be doing this weekend.

"Ooh-Oooooh Swamp Diamonds!"

2010-08-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

It's MST3K Drink & Draw time again. This time, it's Swamp Diamonds, AKA Swamp Girls, a Roger Corman "girls on the lam in the bayou" schlock-fest.

Movie-sign is tomorrow night, August 25th, beginning at 9 pm. Who's in?

Watch along on Netflix. Draw along with the movie. Follow along on Twitter with @theChrisHaley and @theJenya (that's her face in that there diamond, lookin' all sultry & whatnot) OR find all the great tweets using the hashtag #MST3kDandD. And there's always our Flickr pool for posting your drawerings.

What Does This MEEEEAN?!

2010-08-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

For some context, go here.

You Gotta Hear This

2010-08-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

Tom Waits covering the legendary James Brown's classic, "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag." It's like if Albert Einstein decided to cover Isaac Newton. Or something. Anyway, it's glorious.

You're welcome.

America's Busybody

2010-08-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

"Do I hear the sound of butting in? It's gotta be little Lisa Simpson, Springfield's answer to a QUESTION NO ONE ASKED!"

– Ned Flanders, losing his cool-a-roodily in
the Simpson's episode, "Hurricane Neddy."

So, yeah, Sarah Palin, America's Busybody. Since when did we need her to throw her two cents in Every. Single. Issue? First off, she decided that the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," (pronounced: "It's a community center. You know, more like a YMCA, only the 'C' is a 'M'.") to be built on "hallowed ground," (pronounced: "A former Burlington Coat Factory") needed to be "refudiated," (pronounced: "Not a word, you dunderhead.") by peaceful Muslims &/or New Yorkers. Because, you know, as an Alaskan (and one whose husband was a member of a group who wanted Alaska to defect from the Unites States, no less…), this directly affects her.

Now I'm not going to debate about this community center, its placement, or whether it's a good idea or not. Opinions are obviously divided. My company line is that I don't live in New York. It's not my business. Buuuut, I like the Constitution. I like the freedom of being able to gather and worship in the manner I see fit without worry of hassle from the government. And, as a member of a vilified, misunderstood religious group who is always getting hassle for trying to build their weird, secretive buildings in myriad strategic locations, (and one whose history is rife with accusations of complicity in a secret plot by its members to overthrow the government and therefore should be shooed out of the country as quickly as possible, if not shot on sight) I stand by the First Amendment and well, if it's good enough for the neighbors and zoning boards in New York (or their mayor), let them build their community center in a shabby Burlington Coat Factory location a couple of blocks from the former World Trade Center. (By the way, with the way Manhattan is shaped, pretty much anything in the lower tip of the island is a couple of blocks from they World Trade Center. But maybe that's just The Elitist in me speaking.)

But, like I said, opinions differ. Whatever, because well, First Amendment. Which brings me to the latest bruhaha Sarah Barracuda/Quitter McGee decided to weigh in on: radio personality/advice diva/A.M. yenta Dr. Laura Schlesinger's recent flap for using the N-word numerous times (numerous times!) during a conversation with a caller on her show. Now her defense is that she was using it to make a philosophical point AND black comedians say it AND they say it on HBO, but still, the fact stands: she used a racially charged word over and over and over on her radio show. Also, for what it's worth, we're talking about a lady who looks like this, which is to say, pretty dang white:

Personally, I don't mind Dr. Laura. I used to work a construction job with a guy who listened to her semi-religiously and she was fun; doling out sound, common sense advice like a friendly mom who'll tell you how it really is, kid. Sure, she's a busybody, which is probably why Sarah decided she needed to defend her, I guess. It's part of the Busybody Sisterhood Bylaws or something. Look it up.

Anyway, because of the flap, Dr. Laura's gonna retire from her syndicated talk show, telling Larry King that she was looking forward to having her First Amendment rights back by being off the air. We'll get into why this is a stupid statement shortly.

Good old Sarah tweeted her two cents (because let's face it, she has a lot of free time on her hands ever since she quit her job and hired a ghostwriter to writer her books, Facebook page posts and, one assumes, those lists on her hands) thusly:

"Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")" (link)

And: "Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America." (link)

So, let's talk about why this is totally dumb. Let's start by refreshing ourselves with the First Amendment that's being bandied about so much here. From the National Archives website, the transcript of the Amendment reads like so:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Got it? Do you see the part where it says, "You can say whatever you want and nobody can say anything about it?" No? Whaaaa-? Surely it must be in there.

There seems to be this idea that the First Amendment means that you can say whatever dumb, insensitive or inaccurate thing you want without others saying, "You know, what you just said was dumb. Or insensitive. Or inaccurate. Or all three." This is not the case. If it were, then that means that Sarah Palin was obstructing the Constitutional rights of Rahm Emmanuel when she got all busybody-ish about a report of him saying that Congressional Democrats' objections to the (at the time) Health Care Bill were "retarded."

(It means "stunted." Again, look it up if you need to. It also has other connotations, namely an epithet towards the developmentally challenged. We can split hairs here and talk about usage and why when Emmanuel used it, he was referring to the Congress member's demands, and not a person, therefore the usage is obviously not intended to connote a mental handicap; whereas when Rush Limbaugh used the word to describe members of Congress themselves, he knew full well that that was what he was referring to, namely that the aforementioned Congress members were developmentally challenged. But we won't get into that. It's also interesting that when Dr. Laura gets in trouble for using the N-word, – repeatedly! – Sarah Palin's right there defending her civil liberties, but if somebody says "retarded," man, you better watch out. She will go all Mama Grizzly on you. But hypocrisy's always looked good on Palin.)

Another example: the former Miss California's sort-of-recent kerfuffle vis a vis: gay marriage versus "opposite marriage." Did she have the right to answer the question according to the dictates of her conscience and limited mental capabilities? Sure. Does that mean that her comments should have been uncontested or at the very least un-made-fun-of? Nope. Sorry. I mean, "opposite marriage"? Seriously? The Constitution doesn't cover against mean words or hurt feelings or reasoned rebuttal.

At least not until I get made President.

Look, if Dr. Laura is exercising her First amendment rights by using the N-word to try and make a philosophical point, well, okay then I guess. But it's A) a stupid thing to do, and B) others are just as protected under the First Amendment by "refudiating" those remarks. That's the cost of democracy. It's also the cost of being an adult. It's called accountability and responsibility. You know, the kind of stuff Dr. Laura's shoveling on a daily basis, but apparently won't eat herself, choosing instead to wallow in victimhood.

The bottom line is this: the First Amendment does not mean what Sarah Palin (and a lot of other people) thinks it means. The Amendment simply states that the government can't put limits on your speech (unless it's public or commercial or obscene or slanderous). It's not a free pass to shoot your mouth off whenever you get a microphone in front of your face with fear of reprisal. Welcome to America.

Also: white people should not be using the N-word. Ever. Never ever. Period. Full stop. Not for comedic purposes, not to make a philosophical point, not for any reason. Just don't do it. Cut it out of your brain if you have to. And if a white person does let it slip for whatever reason, they deserve all the backlash that comes their way.

The First Amendment does not protect you from the consequences of your speech, especially when it's done over public airwaves.

Sorry dudes.

Day Late/Dollar Short

2010-08-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Hey there. I didn't get around to it yesterday, but here's the latest MST3K Drink & Draw poster. This one's for the film Night of the Blood Beast, about an astronaut who comes back from the cosmos all knocked up with alien babies. Sexiness/hilarity ensues.

Go and check out the Flickr pool for more great stuff. Oh, and next week's film is the Roger Corman, "girls on the lam in the bayou," schlockfest that is Blood Diamond, so get ready for that.

The Cosmic String

2010-08-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday! Which of course means it's time for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Super Friends Club Drink & Draw event, featuring this week's presentation, 1965's Monster-A-Go-Go. Here's the poster.

Movie-sign is tonight, August 11th, beginning at 9 pm. Who's in?

Watch along on Netflix. Draw along with the movie. Follow along on Twitter with @theChrisHaley and @theJenya OR find all the great tweets using the hashtag #MST3kDandD. And there's always our Flickr pool for posting your drawerings.

Oh, and I'm still curious about your thoughts on printing these up and selling them in the Tuff Industries shop. Which ones should I offer? Would you buy one? Should it be specific for the event or be reworked to be just a movie poster? Let me know in the comments section, por favor.

These Are the Breaks

2010-08-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

So like a million years ago, when the world was young and Triceratops was still a dinosaur, Chris Haley and I pinged together one of our legendary collaborative mixes.

Over the course of a few days we pulled together our tracks and Chris came up with a pretty baller title (Ping, vol. 6 – Dance Fighter 2: Electric Punch-A-Yoo! Just sorta rolls off the tongue, right?) and we were like, "Yay! This is great! Now let's do the cover art!" So Chris whipped up this great illustration of a guy with a fist for a head and I was like "Yeah! This mix is gonna be huuuuuuge!" and then I started to finish it off but then I lost my job last year and my world turned upside-down and I totally forgot about this poor mix as it sat in my iTunes, coverless, unshared and unloved.

Poor fella.

Well, no more! My life is now right-side-up and Chris has reminded me enough and I got it done and now you can download and enjoy the latest in Ping Mixtapery Saga by clicking this link right here. It's also available in the Master List, along with a bunch of other mixes from the BRR Mixtape Brigade.

Oh, and why don't you just go ahead and download my monthly mix, Baby C'Mon while you're at it?

Tom Servo

2010-08-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of week again, time for the MST3K Super Friends Club Drink & Draw event. This week, we're screening Santa Claus.You know, the one where he teams up with Merlin to defeat Satan. That one.

The action starts tomorrow night, August 4th, 2010, beginning at 9 pm Eastern time.

Watch along on Netflix. Draw along with the movie. Follow along on Twitter with @theChrisHaley and @theJenya OR find all the great tweets using the hashtag #MST3kDandD. And there's always our Flickr pool for posting your drawerings.

Oh, and as a bonus, here's the poster for last week's movie, First Spaceship On Venus.

*******

And as long as we're on the subject, I'm thinking of offering prints of some of these in my Etsy shop, Tuff Industries, but I'm a little unsure of the specifics. What do you guys think? Which ones should I offer? (There's a Flickr set here. I'm thinking from Werewolf on.) Would you buy one? And if so, should it be for the event, or be reworked to be just a movie poster? Let me know in the comments section, por favor.

These Darned, Dirty Apes

2010-08-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

Here's August's mix. Featuring tracks from: The Breeders, The Oranges Band, The Modern Lovers, Stephen Malkmus, Rogue Wave, Bob Dylan, T.Rex, Dr. Dog, Harry Nilsson, Phoenix, Guidance Counselor, Dirty Projectors, Built Like Alaska, The Smiths, The Mountain Goats, The Count Five, The Sunshine Fix, The Raincoats, Let's Active!, and Sparks. Lots of "The…" bands this month. Weird.

Download it here.

As always, there are more mixes over on the Master List. Feel free to share it with anyone and everyone. Sharing is caring.

And hey, have you made a mix that I should know about? Lemme know in the comments section.

"KILER BEES! You Forgot About Them, Didn't Ya?"

2010-07-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

Oh man. So now we know where Glenn Beck got his shtick from.

Approaching Nugothotropolis

2010-07-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

The freedom DC offers is something stranger, less commercial, but it still gives with possibilities. … If Marvel is the Communists, cutting off the intelligentsia and making all things mediocre and equal, DC is America, where it's every man for himself and this is a free country as long as you pledge allegiance to the flag.

It's the perfect place for Grant Morrison, whose comics "don't make sense" a lot anyway, who used to brag about using chaos to make magic. The editors have no time to wrangle a mind that big, in fact none of them have a mind that compares, and besides, he's Grant Morrison, and besides besides, our digital comics platform is coming soon, promise! Morrison can truly do whatever he wants at DC because he thrives on the continuity. He'd be doing it even if they didn't make him. It's his idea of fun to do a comic like Batman #700, where he pops out a Batman-TV-show-style villain team-up, makes Batman Beyond official continuity (brownie points!), creates some new characters for the next writer to degrade, and kills an old and useless one. DC loves it when their writers do that. They love this violent, past-obsessed kind of thing so much they let Morrison write out their future in big awesome-ugly Dave Finch pages, where Bruce Wayne lives to a ripe old post-DK2 age and the city of tomorrow is called "Nugothotropolis". There are new names, new visions, new ideas mixed in with the old ones, ideas from a yesterday and ideas for a tomorrow – unlike at Marvel where the idea is anathema and every day is the present. At DC, time and creativity flow like crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico, like blood from a Tony Daniel villain's mouth. That is to say, it's ugly and it's stupid and it's not something a lot of people want, but it's by-G** happening.

*******

Matt Seneca of Death to the Universe on Batman, issue #700.

He's A Soul Man

2010-07-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of week again, time for the MST3K Super Friends Club Drink & Draw event for the terrible film, Soultaker, starring the man among men, Joe Estevez.

The action starts tonight, July 14th, 2010, beginning at 9 pm Eastern time. Be there or be square.

Watch along on Netflix. Draw along with the movie. Follow along on Twitter with @theChrisHaley and @theJenya OR find all the great tweets using the hashtag #MST3kDandD. And there's always our Flickr pool for posting your drawerings.

Originally {or} The Ballad of Pablo Picasso

2010-07-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

Candace has a great post up about inspiration, copycats and ethics on Etsy in light of our latest run-in with a plagiarist. You should go read it. She sums up a lot of what we discussed when this was all going down. I'm sure this won't be the last time we're ripped off. Our print has garnered enough popularity in the handmade and craft community that it's a sure target for sellers who want to make a buck without putting in the effort of creation. Which rankles, but hey, what can you do besides call them on it and hope they do the right thing? Thankfully, these people are in the minority in the community.

I mean, inspiration's one thing, and a very valuable thing at that, but wholesale plagiarism is another thing entirely. Picasso's quoted colloquially as saying that good artists copy and great ones steal, and that may be so, but when I read "steal," I think of it as a classy thing, you know? Like Danny Ocean and his boys knocking over a humongous, intricately-planned heist. Or David Niven in The Pink Panther. Artful stealing isn't looting, where you throw a brick and grab whatever you can without paying for it. A real thief, like a cat-burglar or a pick-pocket, steals with a style and effortlessness that leaves you, for a time, unaware that such theft has taken place. For a while, you don't even notice that the silverware drawer is emptied or the Ming vase is gone or your trouser pocket is one wallet lighter. And once the theft is realized, you're sort of amazed and a little envious that they pulled it off.

Like I said, inspiration is key when you're working creatively. But inspiration isn't appropriation. Inspiration is taking everything you experience – visually, psychologically and, yeah, spiritually – from the color of a traffic light in the afternoon or the composition of a comics page or a record in a thrift shop or the way you misread a word on a billboard or some TV show you remember from when you were a kid – and filtering that through your training and ability to best communicate what you're trying to say. Art, if you're doing it right, is communication. And if you're unwilling or unable to use your own words to communicate, well, that's just sad. This is why I don't use too much reference when I'm designing; it becomes a crutch that stands between you and real, honest-to-goodness inspiration. Which is not to say I haven't done an homage or utilized visual shorthand to get my point across. I have, (for example, my TARDIS poster is an obvious homage to the famous "Keep Calm & Carry On" posters of WW2 Britain. But for me, this made sense, as Doctor Who is another famous and instantly-recognizable British icon.) but most of the time, I prefer to arrive at my conclusions naturally.

One more apocryphal Picasso story and then we'll close. (Seriously, the dude's like the Buddha of Art with all these stories and sayings.) Legend has it that Pablo Picasso – who, I'm told, was never called an a**hole – was sitting in a café, just being all awesome and stuff, when somebody approached him for a portrait. He doodled for a second on a napkin and handed it to the person. Yay, Picasso! When the guy asked how much he owed Picasso, Picasso gave him an outrageous sum. The dude balked, saying "Look, I know you're Picasso and all that, but there's no way it's worth that much. It took you like 30 seconds, tops. And half of that time you spent looking at that lady's boobs."

"No, dude. It took me 40 years to make this." said Picasso. "You know, because I've been doing this for that long and so that's how I was able to do it so quickly. Get it? Also, I am Picasso and I an awesome. So, pay up."

Is the story true? Yes, it is. I know because I was there. But seriously, it makes a salient point as to what you're paying for when you pay for art. The physical act of creation (or copying) is not the sum of that creation. A lot of time is spent thinking, planning, wool-gathering, on top of the years of formal training and experience in order to produce a piece. Simply copying a term paper in one's own handwriting is still plagiarism – in fact it's the textbook definition of plagiarism. So, even though you spent the time and effort to rewrite every word from the original and even though you changed some words around and used a different colored pen, it's still a copy and a fraud. It's still devoid of original thought and feeling.

Bottom line: copying isn't cool. Don't do it.

Gas Up Your Supercycles

2010-07-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight's the night. It's the Mystery Science Theater Drink & Draw, hosted by the fine folks at the MST3K Super Friends Club. The film we'll be watching is the post-apocalyptic stinker, Warrior of the Lost World.

The action gets revved up tonight, beginning at 9 pm Eastern time.

Watch along on Netflix. Draw along with the movie. Follow along on Twitter with @theChrisHaley and @theJenya OR find all the great tweets using the hashtag #MST3kDandD. And there's always our Flickr pool for posting your drawerings.

Nimoy vs. Shatner

2010-07-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

Awesome.

[via]

Library Hijinx

2010-07-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

So, here's why I can't go back to my local library branch.

Personally, I blame the Who. More specifically, I blame their 2006 rock opera, Endless Wire, which, although I have never heard it (a little more on this later), I can only imagine is pretty terrible. Seriously, there's no point in calling it a Who album if the band doesn't include Keith Moon or John Entwhistle. Duh. And Pete Townshend, enough with the rock operas. We get it, it's sort of your thing and they're all high-brown and stuff, but man, they suck. Okay, yeah Tommy's pretty widely enjoyed (even if I think it's sort of crap) and you've got me on Quadrophenia (it's a pretty great record), but Psychoderelict? The Iron Man? Lifehouse? White City? Nobody wants to hear that but old muso fogeys. It's boring.

Anyway.

It all started when I tried to renew David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries, which so far is pretty fantastic. I encountered an error on the Las Vegas Clark County Library District's newly-uglified website. Awesome. So, I figured there was some sort of error with the website transition and planned on dropping by my local branch to set it straight. So, while I was logged in, I looked into what books I still had checked out and saw that the system was showing me as having Travis' The Man Who record as well as the aforementioned Endless Wire still checked out, which was weird because, yeah, I'd never checked that out. I had checked out the Travis record in an effort to re-import it into my iTunes at a higher bitrate than what I had (256 kbps vs. the 128 kbps I had in there previously), but I remembered not needing to do so because, turns out, I had already re-ripped it. Awesome. But I'd returned The Man Who like a week and a half ago. Weird.

No worries, though. I was sure that the librarians could help me figure it out.

Big mistake.

First off, you guys know me. You know how I feel about libraries. If the Conservatives would chill out a little and let a brother live, I would marry libraries. Our babies would be books. Incredibly white books, but books nonetheless. And since returning to Vegas, I'd sort of grown to like my local library system, even though it treated me like both an employee and a criminal.

See, thanks to (I'm assuming) budget cuts and the relative inexpensiveness of RFID tags, most of the stuff that used to be handled by employees of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District – stuff like pulling held items and checking out those items – have now devolved onto the shoulders of the patrons. Which is kind of cool in a "pick your own strawberries," sort of way, I guess. I don't have to feel guilty about putting a bunch of stuff on hold or checking out a pile of DVDs or CDs, since I'm having to do all that work myself instead of a LVCCLD employee. This does, however lead to a few annoying moments, like, for instance, if the security device on one of your items decides not to deactivate no matter how many times you wave it across the pad in like a million directions and you and the always borderline psychopathic security guard are stuck trying to figure out which item is causing the doorway thingies to beep like you're stealing something.

And yeah, I can sort of understand why you won't give my kid a library card without me showing some sort of proof of residency even though I myself have a library card that I had to show proof of residency in order to procure. I mean, it seems a little extreme (we're not buying a car or applying for a credit card here, you know?) but there are enough charlatans in Vegas that I can see how you'd need to be a little more strict, I guess, even though I told the guy who told me so that I thought this was a "pretty dumb" policy before I stormed off with my sad kid.

So anyway, LVCCLD is sort of like a gulag, where you're forced to labor while being treated like criminals. (So I'm being dramatic. Sue me.) I should have known that I was in trouble when I moseyed up to the counter and got the same guy who rejected my kids' library card application without proof of residency and the same guy who had told me that he just couldn't bend the rules and let me check out this one extra held DVD because it would put me over the limit, thereby causing me to return the very next day to return one DVD and check out the other one. This guy's been here for years. I remember when he was a high-schooler re-shelving returns back in the good old days, where you'd find me sitting on one of those step-stools in front of the CDs or lurking in the section that held the same five graphic novels I'd read before. Aaaaah, memories. Based on my previous encounters with him, something told me that there would be "nothing he could do" to help me out with this The Man Who/Who snafu.

Sure enough, he was powerless in the face of bureaucracy. The Who CD belonged to another branch and I'd have to "go down there" and work it out with them.

"Um, no. I'm not 'going down there,' to fix this. That's crazy." I said. "Obviously, this is a mix-up of some sort, I never checked out this Who CD."

No, he assured me, I had checked it out. It was nigh impossible that it would show up as being checked out to me if it were not so, but since this belongs to ______ branch, they would have to fix it. There was, he informed me, "nothing he could do." Well, he could do one thing: he could renew Bicycle Diaries for me. Anything more than that was just too difficult. Gee, thanks. You're a pro and a bro.

(I should also add here that during this entire exchange, this dude's giving me the old "Oh man, not this a**hole again," look.)

So, I left frustrated and went about my business, too flustered and flummoxed by the Red Tape Tango to remember that I had the complete Twin Peaks on hold. Which is how I found myself totally sneaking in a few hours later to try and stealthily check it out without running into my nemesis. Except guess what? The self-service machine informs me that there's a "HOLD SHELF CONFLICT" and I can't check it out. So, it's back to the circulation desk. Yipee.

I see my nemesis shifting in his chair, but he's "helping" another customer, so I get a youngish woman who, apparently, is familiar enough with the situation (Hey, I've worked in this type pf atmosphere before. I'm sure he was commiserating with her about this guy who always gets mad when I just flat-out refuse to do anything for him.) to inform me that my account is on hold until I "go down there" to the other location and get this sorted out. She is equally ineffectual, unable to do anything beyond telling me that maybe I can call "down there" and see if they can fix it over the phone. But again, despite my insistence that I never checked out this Who CD, there's just nothing she or, apparently, anyone else can do to help me.

So, I call "down there" and proceed to vent on this poor lady who, again, can do nothing to help me other than calm me down a bit. She tells me I'd have to call first thing Monday morning and talk to their head of circulation and see if there was anything she could do. She did give me the bar-code for the Travis CD and gave me some tips for dealing with my local branch.

Only one problem; it's Saturday. This is gonna bug me all weekend if I have to wait until Monday. Maybe, just maybe there's *something" my local branch can do. Let's call them. Why not, right?

So, back into it. I call my local branch and talk to the same lady I spoke with like a half-hour earlier. I try and find out how this might have happened and she's totally not helpful, bordering on hostile. It's decided: I checked both of them out and must have switched them, despite the fact that I'm sitting here, telling her, "No. I never checked out that Who CD. Why would I? It's probably terrible!"

"I don't know, but that's the only solution." So, could they have been mixed up before I checked them out? Because I don't think I even opened that one. "I don't know. The other branch will have to answer that for you because that Travis CD isn't here. You must still have it." Um, I don't have it. I returned it. "Well, did you keep the receipt?" No. It gave me the option to print my receipt and I pressed "No." Thought I'd save a receipt tree. "Well, you'll probably have to pay to replace the Travis CD, then. Maybe the other one, too, the Endless Wire one. You should always keep your receipts." Then why not just make the receipts mandatory, if they're your only recourse in a situation like this? Why give me the option? "Well, some people don't want them." Yeah, uh, like me. But can't you check and see that I returned this or, I mean, if it came from another branch, wouldn't I have had to request it? Can you look that up and see that I never requested it? "No, we don't keep those records." Really? "Really."

Silence.

"So," I ask, "let me get this straight, if I can't get this other branch to fix this, I'm going to have to pay for this CD I know I returned as well as this other one I never checked out."

"Yes."

"This is bordering on Kafka-esque here, m'am." I chuckle in frustration, half-expecting to sprout cockroach wings at any moment. "Can you see why this is very frustrating?"

"I guess so, yes. But, like I said," say it with me, kids, "there's nothing we can do on this end."

"Alright. Thanks." And I hang up, defeated. But no sooner have I hung up and start to explain the conversation to Candace – who has already figured it all out and is just being nice at this point, pitying her poor, "special needs" husband who has to somehow beat the system to feel sort of like he isn't insignificant in a world that has rendered him neutral – that I think of another angle to try and weasel myself between the bureaucracy and what I want. To the Dolt-Phone!

So I call back. I know, I know. I'm "That Guy." But this time I end up getting the reference desk somehow. I can sort of picture the guy I'm talking to because I mean, there are like a half dozen people working there and I'm there like once a week. So I explain to him my situation. He pulls up my account and goes to see if he can figure out what's going on.

I'm on hold and it's playing "On Hold," music which, who makes this stuff? I wonder if it's "the Overture," from the Who's epic Endless Wire opus and start to cry on the inside. The music plays on, some weird mixture of easy listening and ambient noise. Tuneless, formless. Audio ficusses dotting the landscape of waiting.

Aaand, just when I think he's forgotten about me, the Reference Dude is back. I brace myself for the lament of impotence; the inevitable, "There's nothing we can do, but maybe if you call this person 'down there' they can help you, even though I know dang well they can't."

Instead, I'm met with a, "Well, okay. I think we figured this out. It looks like the CDs were mixed up when you checked them out." Lo & behold! "Why couldn't this have been figured out the first time?" I wonder to myself, but keep it there for fear of angering the Library Gods. Reference Dude tells me that they'll take care of it. The other stuff has been taken off my account and I should be good to go. I refresh my browser window and KA-BLAM! he's right. Justice – like lightning!

"Are you serious?!" I exclaim, "This is great! You're the fourth person I've spoken to and none of them could help me." I am overflowing with love for Reference Dude.

"Okay." he retorts, probably wanting to be rid of This Dude Who Just Won't Stop.

Not one to know when to stop, I say, "Thank you. You are an incredible person. If I were standing in front of you, I would hug you." Yeah, I did. This is almost an exact quote. Sensing that I have crossed some sort of line because I am totally socially retarded, and, well, I totally have, I say thanks again, get an "Okay, okay," in return and hang up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, is why I can never go into that library branch again, at least not without some sort of disguise. Does anybody know where a fella can get a decent fake mustache in Las Vegas?

"Home Is Where I Wanna Be"

2010-07-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, we've added a new poster to the Sparkle Power stable with the new "Home Sweet Home," series. Six colors, one happy house. Head over to the shop and pick one up. They make a great housewarming gift. Buy ten of them.

That's America … To Me

2010-07-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

Another Bruce monologue. Have a safe and sane Independence Day, kids.

Also, don't forget that if you share my latest mix, I'll send you a bonus mix, which could come in handy this weekend.

Have fun. Don't blow off any digits.

Take Me Back To Wondaland

2010-07-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Hey hey hey. July is here and so is the newest mix. Also, it is hot as the center of Hell in Vegas right now. But this mix, this mix is cool. You can download it here. Featuring songs from The Shins, Vampire Weekend (yeah, again), Wilco, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings (yay!), The Dutch Rhythm Steel & Show Band, Paul Simon, Jan & Dean (I've been waiting to work this track in for a while now), Elliott Smith, Graham Nash, Frank Black, Esquivel, Janelle Monáe (you should really check out her new album The ArchAndroid, it's really pretty great), Jens Lekman (of course), The Beatles, Bruce & Terry, The Ventures, Hanoi Janes, The Tammys, Gnarls Barkley and The Drums. It's Hammock Rock, basically.

There are more mixes over on the Master List. Feel free to share it with anyone and everyone. In fact, if you do share it (on Facebook, Twitter or on your blog), drop a link or comment and I will send you a very special Independence Day mix. For realsies.

Let me repeat: If you share this mix, I will send you a special mix.

That is all. Enjoy.

"Pruppets Are Little People Who Can Talk."

2010-06-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

"It’s as if it’s 4:30 in the morning he had snuck into the studio to make this show without getting permission. It’s bare bones. Lots of technical problems. Just a mess. The whole thing is a big mess. A big beautiful mess." – Tim Heidecker to Entertainment Weekly

You wanna know what show I love to bits? Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule, that's what. It's like the most bizarre, depressing and hilarious thing ever. For example, here's the good doctor interviewing his "brother," Stan Brule, who loves "preetzas," and has 500 skateboards:

And is also just a fantasy because Dr. Brule always wanted to know what it would be like to have a brother. Funny and kinda dark, right?

This show, it speaks to some sick part of me. I love it like a lot. You should too. It's a lot more focused than it's parent show, Tim & Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job! which started off as bizarre/kinda wrong/hilarious and then ventured off into bizarre/makes you wanna barf/is unwatchable. You can watch all six episodes of Check It Out! over at the adult swim site. You won't be sorry, you dingus.

Fine Pewter Portraits of General Apathy

2010-06-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

Matt Taibbi on CBS's Lara Logan and the Rolling Stone/McChrystal debacle:

True, the Pentagon does have perhaps the single largest public relations apparatus on earth – spending $4.7 billion on P.R. in 2009 alone and employing 27,000 people, a staff nearly as large as the 30,000-person State Department – but is that really enough to ensure positive coverage in a society with armed with a constitutionally-guaranteed free press?

And true, most of the major TV outlets are completely in the bag for the Pentagon, with two of them (NBC/GE and Logan's own CBS, until recently owned by Westinghouse, one of the world's largest nuclear weapons manufacturers) having operated for years as leaders in both the broadcast media and weapons-making businesses.

But is that enough to guarantee a level playing field? Can a general really feel safe that Americans will get the right message when the only tools he has at his disposal are a $5 billion P.R. budget and the near-total acquiescence of all the major media companies, some of whom happen to be the Pentagon's biggest contractors?

Does the fact that the country is basically barred from seeing dead bodies on TV, or the fact that an embedded reporter in a war zone literally cannot take a s*** without a military attaché at his side (I'm not joking: while embedded at Camp Liberty in Iraq, I had to be escorted from my bunk to the latrine) really provide the working general with the security and peace of mind he needs to do his job effectively?

Apparently not, according to Lara Logan. Apparently in addition to all of this, reporters must also help out these poor public relations underdogs in the Pentagon by adhering to an "unspoken agreement" not to embarrass the brass, should they tilt back a few and jam their feet into their own mouths in front of a reporter holding a microphone in front of their faces.

Go. Read.

Here's A Non-Bruce One

2010-06-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

"So it's uh, it's uh, in no way poo-based?"
"So there's no reason to see a doctor!"

I think I could just post a Kids In the Hall sketch every day and be satisfied. But I won't. Probably.

Completely Losing It

2010-06-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

You see this online:

You read the lineup and your jaw drops, your mouth goes dry and your hands start sweating. This cannot be real. You read that lineup again. And again, trying to make your brain make sense of the band names that seem to blur together. That is pretty much every great band you have ever loved or at least liked. Then you read it again and you are sure it's some sort of dream or trick or hallucination. Then you pinch yourself and when you're still staring at the screen you realize THIS IS HAPPENING THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING AND IT'S HAPPENING IN LAS VEGAS WHERE YOU ARE LIVING, DUDE! and you officially start freaking out. You're going to have to write that out so it can seem real.

...

Still doesn't seem real.

Is it July 5th yet?

Soft-Boiled Wonderland & the End of Lost

2010-06-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

First off, this is a long one. Also, it's about Lost. And S*P*O*I*L*E*R*S, too. You have been warned.

Okay, so I had this thing written about the finale of Lost and it was gonna be all about misplaced expectations and letting it end on its own without getting in its way and how Lost was a drama with mysterious elements and not a mystery with dramatic elements and all this stuff. I had extended and shaky metaphors about apples and oranges and answers and questions and all this stuff. It was pretty highbrow ish.

And then I read Geoff Klock's post on his problems with the finale and man, this dude is totally right. You should really go read it. I'll wait.

.......

His theory that the endgame of Lost was retooled (and eventually shunted into the Sideways World/Afterlife Construct/Purgatory we've seen over the last season) once the show became popular and their rather intelligent and rabid fanbase pegged the ending pretty early on totally explains some of the more nagging problems people have had in getting everything to lay down just right. And I can understand their frustration with its inability to do so. Human beings like order. But by its nature as a televisions series – as art in service of commerce and tight deadlines – Lost just isn't going to come out perfectly no matter how much we'd like it to.

As I said in the comments thread on the post, TV is a messy medium, especially network TV. When all is said and done, a network television show is a work of art created as a shell for advertising and, hopefully, syndication. It's created solely to make money. If some art sneaks in with that money-making; fine. Whatever. But let's not kid ourselves. The fact that any of these dollar-vessels achieve any sort of success beyond that purpose (and I think we can all agree that a lot of TV shows don't) is a small miracle. The ambition of Damon, Carlton and their production and writing staff is to be applauded. They took a fairly disposable, unappreciated medium – the television drama – and set out to say something about humanity. Now, whether you feel that they were successful or not is another thing entirely and that's between you and the universe. As I said, I think they were successful, despite the best efforts of fate.

Being as this is a serialized drama with real actors and real-life constrictions, both monetary and otherwise (for example: Walt having to leave the Island because the actor playing him hit puberty, Ana Lucia/Libby being killed off because of DUI charges, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's Mr. Eko character being killed because he was bored with the show, large swaths of the third season that exist solely to kill time while the show was retooled to work for another three seasons), sometimes stuff gets tossed out. Sometimes bad ideas find their way into the mix and end up forgotten once calmer heads prevail. ("Stranger In A Strange Land," anyone?) Sometimes opportunities get missed. Somebody somewhere in the Internet said, derisively, that Lost was just a glorified soap opera and yesyesyes, it totally is, but does that mean it's devoid of worth? Like I said, it's messy and the fact that this show managed to pull this much off while still remaining fairly popular is a small miracle.

Which is why I am prone to cut this show some major slack. Its ambition overpowers its shortcomings, in my opinion, but then again, I really respect ambition. I'm more inclined to overlook little incongruities and misfires if the artist/author/et cetera aims high and falls short. It's like this guy says about an even more flawed series and finale – Grant Morrison's noddle-cooking ending to Final Crisis – it's flawed, but still ultimately succeeds solely because it's trying so hard. Does everything about Lost fit together like some Swiss grandfather clock, immaculately designed and constructed and built to run for lifetimes? No. Is it still one of my favorite TV series and, in my opinion, one of the better ones in recent memory? Absolutely.

Because where else are you going to see a TV drama focusing on the debate between free will and predestination? Or if we can ever overcome our past? Or the importance of community and living together? I know it's sort of a cop-out to say "Lost has always been about the characters, not about Jacob and his brother or time travel or whatever so shut up, dude on the Internet." I know that it's a cop-out, but it's also sort of true. I was always more invested in whether Jack could overcome his need to control Every. Little. Thing. or if Locke could stop being angry with his dad or if Kate could stop running from catastrophe to catastrophe or if Hurley would embrace his destiny or if Ben could really not be a creepy, manipulative creepoid.

So here we are. A month or so later. Everything that happened, happened. And it only ends once. Everything else is progress. Our Castaways found some sort of peace in a non-/multi-denominational afterlife (the Sideways World) after struggling through their problems on the Island. It was pretty beautiful, when all was said and done and all those unanswered questions, they don't matter so much any more. And besides, we all knew they weren't going to be answered to our satisfaction, which is why a lot of them were left dangling. Because a lot of Lost's appeal has been sussing out just what the heck is going on and now we can debate this stuff forever if we're some sort of weird shut-in or something.

Sure, it seems slapped together in retrospect. Because it was. Sure, the Final Boss Battle™ between Jack and Flocke was really uninspired and sort of hackneyed. But it's a TV finale. And the giant magic plug is a little silly, but when we're talking about a show whose main conceit is it's a magic, time-tripping island, well, you don't really get to pull the "Silly Card." Sorry, them's the rules.

In the end, we got a dramatically satisfying, happy-ish ending for all the people we've watched for the last six years. And that final scene with Jack stumbling wounded through the bamboo field, his side pierced like another Shepherd, laying down in the same spot he awoke in the pilot as he traced the path of the Ajira plane as it finally, *finally* escaped the Island? That was pretty dang perfect.

*******

And now, your questions: (did you think I forgot?)

Dave asks:

So, were they all dead when the plane first crashed? I don't know if I was just so wound up in it being the end that I didn't understand it well or what. If they were all dead from the start I don't understand the significance of the no-crash dual story line this season.

Also, what about when Jacob touched them all way earlier in life. How does that work?
Yeah, that was a bit of a problem. ABC has since clarified the reasoning for the Oceanic crash set playing through the finale credits. You can read their reasoning here. Kind of dumb, but there you have it.

As for the Jacob-touch, well, we now know that that happened earlier in their "afterlife," as the Flash-Sideways all took place in a kind of Spirit Prison/Purgatory mental construct.

Chanel asks:

1. How would you think the Hurley as "#1" thing plays out?
We'll find out when ABC releases the Complete Series boxed set later this year which contains a 12-minute vignette, according to Entertainment Weekly.

2. Did the plane make it from the island?
I think so, yeah.

3. Why were certain people like the pilot not there at the end? I mean I get the whole being ready to move on, but that guy seemed just totally left out for having such a big role in the end.
I'd imagine after all the trouble the Castaways caused him, the last thing Frank Lapidus wanted to do was hang out in the afterlife with them.

4. My take on the end, on my blog, if you get a chance to read, I am "getting it" right? I mean it is actually really deep stuff, which I am DYING to hear you GO INTO DETAIL on how you see it all.
Hopefully this is "in detail" enough. Cuz I don't think I can say anything else about this show. Oh, who am I kidding? I could keep going, but man, who's even reading this?

Until next time, kids.

This One's A Close Second

2010-06-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

Why are they all weirdo-surrealist Bruce McCulloch sketches? I have no idea.

Is This My Favorite Kids In the Hall Sketch?

2010-06-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

Yeah, probably.

*******

PS: Yeah, I know I haven't blogged in like forever.

WARNING

2010-06-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

Possible side effects may include:

• Sleeplessness.
• Genital purpling.
• Red, swollen ear-holes.
• Unexpected, explosive, mind-melting diarrhea.
• Vomiting things you know for a fact that you never ate.
• Your bones slowly turning into caramel.
• Believing that you are a reincarnated Egyptian god.
• Terminally itchy leg-pits.
• Believing in mermaids.
• Bowel movements that smell like corn dogs and Mountain Dew.
• Cotton candy teeth.
• Feeling like there is a little person living inside of you who can only scream horrible things like all of the time as loud as he can.
• Lady Gaga-itis.
• Inability to call people by their real names, insisting instead to call them by the names of characters from the show Taxi.
• Farts from Hell.

If your erection lasts for more than 4 days, please consult your physician, guru or witch doctor. Also, you are probably dead.

A Suntan On Their Buns

2010-05-31T20:45:00.000-07:00

June's mix is live. You can download it here. Featuring songs from Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Chuck Berry, The Cyrke, Adam Green, The Clash, Herman Düne, Ed's Redeeming Qualities, Canary, Elf Power, Yo La Tengo, The Specials, Darwin Deez, Bodies Of Water, No Kids, The Art Museums, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Gilberto Gil, Sly & the Family Stone, The Beach Boys and The Apples In Stereo. It's like a suntan for your ears.

There are more mixes over on the Master List. Feel free to share it with anyone and everyone.

Decade of Us

2010-05-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, Candace and I got married. It was awesome. She's the best. I am lucky. That is all.

There's A City In My Mind

2010-05-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on Facebook, I linked to a Pitchfork story about David Byrne suing Florida Governor Charlie Crist over the unauthorized use of a Talking Heads song in Crist's campaign. Today, he blogged about it. I won't comment on it; Byrne does a better job than I could. Read Byrne's entry below, or you can click here to read the entry on his blog, which I heartily recommend you follow.

+++++++

05.25.10: Yours Truly vs. the Governor of Florida

I am bringing a lawsuit against the Governor of Florida.

A while back a friend told me that the Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, was using the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” in a campaign ad. He’s running for Senate.

Well, using a recording of a song, or even just using that song and not the original recording, in an advertisement without permission is illegal, unless the composition has gone into the public domain. It’s not just illegal because one is supposed to pay for such use and not paying is, well, theft — it’s also illegal because one has to ask permission, and that permission can be turned down.

Besides being theft, use of the song and my voice in a campaign ad implies that I, as writer and singer of the song, might have granted Crist permission to use it, and that I therefore endorse him and/or the Republican Party, of which he was a member until very, very recently. The general public might also think I simply license the use of my songs to anyone who will pay the going rate, but that’s not true either, as I have never licensed a song for use in an ad. I do license songs to commercial films and TV shows (if they pay the going rate), and to dance companies and student filmmakers mostly for free. But not to ads.

I’m a bit of a throwback that way, as I still believe songs occasionally mean something to people — they obviously mean something personal to the writer, and often to the listener as well. A personal and social meaning is diluted when that same song is used to sell a product (or a politician). If Crist and his campaign folks had asked to use the song, I would have said no — even if they had offered a lot of money, such as I have been offered in the past for ad use (though I’ve always turned these offers down).

I believe my audience is aware of this no-ad use policy of mine, and part of the respect I am accorded as an artist is due to my maintaining this policy. Needless to say, if they thought I’d licensed a song to a political campaign they might not respect me as much in the morning.

It might be pointed out that Republican campaign organizations have done this kind of thing before. John McCain’s campaign used the Jackson Browne song “Running on Empty” and Reagan’s folks used Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Both were used illegally without permission, and in the case of the Jackson Browne song a lawsuit was brought. After the Republicans lost several motions attempting to dismiss Browne’s complaint, they settled with him. Part of the settlement said that the Republican National Committee promised to respect artists’ rights and to obtain licenses for the use of copyrighted works in the future. So, it’s not like they weren’t warned, or hadn’t been burned before.

Now, there is such a thing as fair use. Typically the type of free use that doesn’t require a permission might be a student quoting a passage in a book to make a point in a graduate paper, or someone using part (not all) of “Road to Nowhere” to identify, say, the marching groove in that song as a metaphor for the inexorable forward momentum of time, or some such notion. These uses are typically exempt from licensing, permission and fees. In this case, however, the use was not to comment on or explain something about “Road to Nowhere,” ’80s music in general, Talking Heads or Cajun accordion riffs — it was used solely to further Governor Crist’s advertising strategy in his Senate primary campaign… a campaign that has nothing to do with me or my music.

Another tactic the Republicans have used to justify this kind of thing is the right to political free speech. Their argument is that the song is integral to making a political point, and therefore falls under free speech. Well, that’s just crazy talk — the song has nothing to do with Crist’s political views. It simply has a title that is a handy catchphrase, as does the Jackson Browne song — but the content of the song itself doesn’t have any connection with the politician’s campaign or agenda.

So, my lawyers and I have filed a lawsuit — and we also hope the Republicans might not engage (again) in this kind of illegal behavior in the future.

+++++++

So yeah, suck it, Charlie Crist.

Anyway, here's the video for the song in question, which I totally love. It's quintessential Talking Heads: equal parts profundity and ridiculousness; part artsy and part, well, fartsy. They're my favorite band.

The End

2010-05-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

So … that's it. The end. Aaaaaand I loved it. But what did you all think? Any questions? Now's the time to ask 'em.

Stuff I Made

2010-05-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

I promise, one of these days I'll blog about something besides stuff I made recently, but in the mean time, uh, here's some stuff I made recently.

First off, we have two weeks' worth of words for Best Mark My Words. Here's "Gadzooks," from the week of April 26th:

And here's last week's word, "Kine," which is an old-timey way of saying "cow":

The funnest part of that last one was waiting for a reaction from the employees at Lowe's when I explained I just needed a swatch of astro-turf for an art project. Although this is Vegas, so I'm sure it's not even on the list of top 50 weirdest things done with astro-turf that these guys have heard of/participated in.

I've also been putting together a set of captioned photos for a series I have titled "Ballerz." Here's a slideshow of the set so far:

And finally, this week's MST3K Drink & Draw is almost upon us. We'll be watching Secret Agent Super Dragon, which is on Hulu this time instead of Netflix. Position your computer machines accordingly. And, like the last couple of weeks, I'll be kicking off the West Coast/Mountain session at 9pm Pacific. It's been really fun, but you don't have to take my word for it. Go check out the Flickr group pool for the goodness. Everybody is welcome. Here's the poster:

Oh, and if you want to join We Bought Comics, you're welcome to do that as well.

We Bought Comics

2010-05-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

So myself and the Handsomest Man In Comics™, Chris Haley, have teamed up to start a new Flickr club called We Bought Comics. Here's our little badge.

And here's how it works: if you bought comics, take a picture of them, either individually or in a group. I'm gonna do both, actually. Tell us what ruled, what sucked and what was just so-so. You can take pictures of yourself reading your books or of the shop you bought them at, if you want to pimp 'em a little. Basically, we wanted a way to share what we're reading and see what others are reading. Cuz we love comic books.

For example, here's what I picked up this week:

So if you're a comics fan and are on Flickr, come join the club. As the Marquis de Sade said, "The more the merrier," right?

Vote "Yes" On Knope

2010-05-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

New Parks & Rec tonight! Are you stoked? Cuz you really should be. Seriously, Thursday nights are a joy, aren't they?

As Easy As 1, 2, 3

2010-05-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

We've got a new poster up in the Sparkle Power shop. It's the Alphabet print and it's available in the same colors as our La La Love You print: pink, orange, yellow, green, aqua and light blue.

As with all of our other posters, these measure 11" x 17" and are printed via a professional-grade inkjet photo printer onto off-white 80# French Paper Company cover stock. As I said, they're all available in the the Sparkle Power Etsy shop. Convo us for bulk orders. We aim to please.

Satellite of Love

2010-05-04T10:37:00.000-07:00

Another week, another Mystery Science Theater 3000 Super Friends Club poster. This time, the film is The Blood Waters of Dr. Z, featuring a disgruntled Nazi scientist who turns himself into a walking catfish. You read that right.

If you want to get in on the MST3K Drink & Draw, all you have to do is hop on the internet at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific,* pull up Netflix, watch the movie and draw whatever pops into your pretty little head as you watch the castways on the Satellite of Love heckle a terrible movie. Then you post it on the Internet. Simple.

And don't forget to post what you're drinking. Me, I think I'll be nursing a nice, cold sarsaparilla or two. Cuz I'm a gangsta.

So yeah, join in! As usual, I'll be posting my stuff on Twitter and Facebook as well as in the the Flickr group pool. Or, if you just want to see what others are drawing and/or drinking, you can follow along on Twitter using this hashtag (or follow MST3KSFC founders Jen and Chris for the highlights).

See you there.

*******

* If anybody else wants to do a West Coast viewing at 9 Pacific, let me know. I did that last week and it worked out pretty well.

"Now this is surgery, so don't eat anything before you come in. Because I'll have a big breakfast waiting for you."

2010-04-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna go ahead and drop this a day early, cuz I'm generous like that. Here's May's mix, Dr. Spaceman. Featuring songs from Love Is All, MGMT, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, LCD Soundsystem, New Order, Beck, Caetano Veloso, The Cellos, Javelin, Toots & The Maytals, Pylon, Chromeo, Gorillaz, Super Furry Animals, Suburban Kids With Biblical Names and, possibly, some medical advice from Ho Chi Minh city medical school graduate Doctor Leo Spaceman peppered in there. It's a doozy.

Get it here.

As usual, there's more mixtapery madness to be found on the Master List. And please feel free to share and promote the mixes or leave a comment if you're liking what you're hearing. Thanks, and remember, science is whatever we want it to be.

In the Not-Too-Distant Future

2010-04-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

So, tonight's the night. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Super Friends Club (MST3KSFC for short) is hosting their third MST3K Drink & Draw, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

At 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific, you point your Netflix machine here and draw whatever madness pops into your head as you watch the silhouettes of a dude and some robots take a part a truly terrible movie, in this case, 1997's Future War. Then you post it on the Internet. Simple.

Oh, and you're supposed to drink while you do it. I have part of a liter of Hawaiian Punch chilling in the fridge just for such an occasion. My life is like a rap video.

Anyway, so it's on like Donkey Kong tonight. I made a poster for the event based on this "cyborg" from the film:

So yeah, join in! I'll be posting my stuff on Twitter/Facebook, much to the annoyance of the three people who haven't hid my feed yet. Make sure to let me know if you'll be playing along, too. I would love to see your stuff.

If you just want to see what others are drawing and/or drinking, you can follow along on Twitter using this hashtag (or follow MST3KSFC founders Jen and Chris for the hilights) and check the Flickr group pool for goodies.

Anyway, hope to see you there. I'll be in the front row, next to Tom Servo, being a smart-A.

Put You On My Wall

2010-04-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

So, I've been busy lately reworking our posters for the Sparkle Power shop. Totally refreshed and reworked, we're currently offering:

Mixtape = Love posters in charcoal grey, sea-foam and light blue.

You & I Are BFF posters in four color combinations.

And of course, the new and improved La La Love You posters in pink, orange, yellow, green, aqua and light blue.

All of these posters measure 11" x 17" and are printed via a professional-grade inkjet photo printer onto off-white 80# French Paper Company cover stock. As I said, they're all available in the Sparkle Power Etsy shop. Convo us for bulk orders. We aim to please.

Betwixt A Rock & A Hard Place

2010-04-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

So I finally got my submission for Best Mark My Words done last night before Lost. The word is "betwixt," which apparently doesn't mean when someone shares their Twix bar with you. Good to know. Here's my selection:

You can check out the other words posted over on the site.

Sailin' Takes Me Away

2010-04-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates this month. I've been workin' on my abs. And this type of stuff:

But seriously, I've had an extreme case of the bloggage, which is to say, I can think of nothing worth blogging about. So yeah, if any of you have a topic that you think, "Dang dude, I wish Dylan would finally just blog about _______," now's yr time to speak up. Seriously, please give me some ideas. I want to blog, really, but I have no good ideas.

In the meantime, I'll be sailin' my mamma-jammin yacht with my homie. Like a piiimp.

Lots of Fun

2010-04-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

This is no prank. This ish is for reals. April's mix; check it:

It's spring. It's getting warmer, the days are getting longer. Roll down the windows while you drive around. Turn the volume up in your hoopty. Bob your head and pump your fists. Show that Easter Bunny who's boss.

This month's mix features springy, sprongy tracks from (deep breath) Frightened Rabbit, Surfer Blood, Oranger, Fungi Girls, Grandaddy, Sparklehorse, Big Star, The Thrills, Clem Snide, Sufjan Stevens, Freelance Whales, Badly Drawn Boy, Real Estate, Loudon Wainwright III, The Dodos, Earlimart, Josef K, Throw Me the Statue, The Moping Swans and Pretty Girls Make Graves. So yeah, you're gonna enjoy it.

Tracklist:

01. "She was not the cure for cancer."
02. "Lucid afternoon dream, cosmopolitan scene."
03. "It's a shiver, a sigh, it's a wooden goodbye."
04. "It's a gorgeous day."
05. "We'll sit for days talk about things important to us like whatever. We'll defuse bombs, walk marathons and take on whatever together."
06. "Dogs will wag their tails and birds will sing. Hell, it's hard world for little things."
07. "Music so loud I can't tell a thing."
08. "I came to the city to build a mountain of envy and to marry a Kennedy."
09. "Punched in the brain, in the gut, in the tear ducts, too."
10. "Don't give up. Let's go. Forget about yourself."
11. "I've arranged for your phobias to be performed by a string quartet."
12. "Our love is alive, you know it's never spent."
13. "Your worries ain't so different from my own, though I'm far more accident prone."
14. "Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes, I'm a self-destructive fool."
15. "A coward's way to be inviolate."
16. "Our heads are sad, our bones are tired as hell."
17. "Otherwise, he'd beat his chest."
18. "Each tug just pulls me through."
19. "Fumigated hags with privilege in their bags."
20. "Keep on doing your thing you do now."

Download it here and, as always, check out the Master List for even more mixtapery goodness.

People My People

2010-03-31T18:12:00.000-07:00

I normally don't do the whole link-blogging thing, but when you stumble upon something as glorious as this, you have to share:

GQ's article on William Shatner.

Seriously people, the man is some sort of genius. You absolutely must read it.

We Are 138

2010-03-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

My Gentlemen Broncos post was my 1,138th post on this blog. Can you believe that? Dang dude, that's a lot of posts. Thank you all for pretending to read them. You are all pretty amazingly great people. That is all.

Bronco, Last of the Yeast Lords

2010-03-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

We recently watched Jared & Jerusha Hess' latest film, the incredibly weird Gentlemen Broncos. It's weird. Like really, really, really weird. It was sort of smothered in its sleep by Fox Searchlight who opened it for one week in a limited number of theaters in a limited number of cities. Its theatrical run made roughly 1% of what the film itself cost to make. Critics, who were already pretty split on Hess' merits as a film-maker, were less than kind to it. Having seen the film, I can say that this is totally understandable. Broncos is (as I said) weird, messy, cynical, unlikable, uneven and not terribly funny.

It's also one of the more interesting films about creativity that I've seen.

Creativity's a gamble. When you create something, at least in the beginning, you do it because you have to. Like Athena bursting out of Zeus' head, sometimes you just gotta get this stuff out of your brain and onto a page or a computer screen or a brick wall or a reel of film or whatever. Once it leaves your head, it becomes open for everyone who encounters it to enjoy, dissect, criticize, steal, discredit or profit from it. Sonic Youth quoted Los Angeles musician Jack Brewer in the Experimental Jet Set Trash & No Star liner notes as saying, of music, that "Once [it] leaves your head, it's already compromised." Broncos, in my estimation, is about just this: what happens when the things you create become real? What if it's stolen? Misrepresented? What would you do to make your vision a reality? What happens when the ideas that once came so effortlessly (Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement's character, Dr. Ronald Chevalier, boasts to an auditorium of aspiring writers – including our "hero" Benjamin – that he painted something like 45 covers for his first novel) won't come any more?

Heady stuff from a guy who made his name off of a squinty-eyed Idaho kid in armpit-high jeans and moon boots, right? So you can see why people expecting Napoleon Dynamite 2.0 – or, as the previews painted it, a sort of low-rent Rushmore in stone-washed denim, maroon turtlenecks and corduroy vests – would be disappointed with something this … "mature" isn't the right word, but it's something like that. While it's not as insightful or well-constructed as, say, the Coen brothers' ode to writers block in Barton Fink, or Christopher Guests middle-finger to the Hollywood machine in For Your Consideration, or Robert Altman's cutting thriller, The Player; Broncos is definitely mining the same territory. The film's central message seems to be that creativity is a messy business and ideas are tricky and nobody is your friend.

Where Napoleon and Nacho Libre were fluffy, scatter-brained comedies about lovable losers overcoming the odds, Broncos is full of, well, just losers. And while there are some laughs, its comedy is dark and its central message bleak. Benjamin's clueless mother, played with characteristic aplomb by Guest alumni Jennifer Coolidge, smothers her son while making him popcorn-ball treats and having him help sell consigned (and hideous) evening gowns at the local swap meet to try and make ends meet. Halley Feiffer's Tabatha plays what you would think is the love interest, but ends up being a manipulative opportunist who gloms onto anyone who she thinks can help her out. Hector Jimenez's Lonnie is a condescending prick whose gigantic ego is matched only by his complete lack of talent. Mike White's a Guardian Angel volunteer (think Big Brother/Big Sister) who only wants to get in Ben's mom's mom-jeans and/or be a famous actor; whichever. And Ben? Ben just sort of flows along with it all with dopey, sad-eyed nonchalance until he can't anymore. Fair-weather friends, big talkers, users, phonies, opportunists, manipulators; these are the grotesques Hess introduces us to and while it's not pretty, it a fair representation of humanity.

Then there's the fictional characters. Sam Rockwell, playing dual roles, is both a joy and a huge problem for the film. Rockwell first appears as Bronco, last of the Yeast Lords and the hero of Ben's stories and an obvious stand-in for Ben's dead game warden father. He later pops up as Brutus, a lisping dandy in the ripped-off Chevalier version of Ben's story. And don't get me wrong, Rockwell's a hoot to watch both as the burly Bronco and the prissy Brutus, but his performances ultimately kick the legs out from under an already precariously-balanced film. By Rockwell playing both parts so broadly, it undermines our commitment to Ben as a writer able to craft a story that anyone would read and publish, let alone rip off and, uh, publish. True, if he'd played it straighter, the film would not have been as funny, but it might have sold the film as a whole a lot better. Still, he's pretty hilarious as he chews through both roles, so what do you do? If you're Jared Hess and this is your first real shot at the Big Leagues, do you tell one of your stars, who's probably working on scale and could be doing other, more lucrative stuff, to pull it back a little? And if you know you're pushing your audience's patience by having your third film be such a radical, strange and dark departure from the lightweight, cartoony stuff you've done before, do you pull out the bits of your film that most closely resemble those films? Or do you leave them in even if it means your film's a little uneven?

If I were a betting man, I'd say that the Hess' next film (if there will be such a thing, given just how much money Broncos lost) will be a lot more in keeping with the Napoleon/Nacho rubric than something like Gentlemen Broncos and while I'd gladly watch such a film, I think it would be a shame. I'd like to see what the Hess' can do when they're not expected to be hilarious like all of the time. I'm not asking for something über-serious, but with Hess' comedic timing, eye for the offbeat and love for losers, I would welcome a slightly more mature film.

And if they can somehow incorporate python diarrhea into it, all the better.

Excellent Suckiness

2010-03-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

I ate at my desk today. I do this sometimes, here at my new office. It's nice to sit and relax and work on dumb stuff for my lunch hour without having to make small talk or feel weird because I don't know all that many people. So anyway, I ate my sandwich. It was good. Turkey and ham with provolone on wheat. Mayo, not Miracle Whip. It was a pretty dang perfect sandwich.

Next up was my yogurt. Yeah, I eat yogurt; so what? Yogurt is good. It was strawberry. Now, normally I don't like strawberries. Something about the texture and the tartness just rubs me the wrong way. But if it's in something like yogurt, I can eat them no problem. So anyway, I eat my yogurt. Like a man.

Looking into my awesome lunch sack, I see that Candace packed me a handful of M&M's. Let's eat those. I throw them in my mouth three at a time. If I don't pay attention to what I'm doing, I just grab any three at random. If I do pay attention, I get all O.C.D. and try to get three of a color, eating that color in three-piece increments. Yeah, I know I'm crazy.

Halfway through my M&M's, I notice I spilled some strawberry yogurt on my shirtfront. Duh. I do this more than I'd like to admit. I don't have a napkin or paper towel handy, so I do the next best thing: I look around to make sure nobody's watching me and I lick the yogurt from my shirt. Like a man.

One problem. I have M&M's in my mouth. Double duh. So now in addition to the yogurt and spit mixture on the front of my shirt, I have added the food coloring from the M&M's to the mix.

I am grace personified.

Parks & Rec In the Heezy

2010-03-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hey dudes, new Parks & Rec tonight. Obviously, I'm excited by this.

This Week's Word: Cove

2010-03-25T07:08:00.000-07:00

Here's this week's word for Best Mark My Words. The word is "cove," which in this instance is a British slang word for "dated, out of style."

I imagine this as a logo painted on a sign in a dilapidated filling station or maybe on an old package in some forgotten corner of a Tesco. Maybe on like a bar of soap or something. Anyway, go check out this week's entries. Enjoy.

Epic Epicness

2010-03-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a good week to be a Scott Pilgrim fan. First off, we got this news and this teaser poster for the upcoming Edgar Wright-(Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, all of which are super-rad)-helmed film adaptation starring the indomitable Michael Cera:

Which is awesome. That tagline's brilliant an the layout is not only in keeping with the opening page of the first volume of the series, but it's also eye-catching as well. Well-played, Whoever Made That.

And today we got this announcement and this cover image for the final installment, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour to be released by Oni Press on July 20th:

Also awesome.

If you like comics or rock & roll or ridiculous kung fu or funny stuff or 8-bit video games or all of these things (in which case, you like rad stuff and we should be friends), you should really be reading this before it explodes into some sort of cultural thing once this movie drops. And you know it will.

So go. Go away! Read some (comic) books!

We're Meeting Arms To Arms

2010-03-19T10:05:00.000-07:00

Dudes, you gotta watch this video and watch it all the way through. I love it so much.

Mind-blowing, right? I love Hot Chip. Go get their latest, One Life Stand. It's dance-tastic.

It's the Mustache

2010-03-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

Ron Swanson is my hero. I'm just sayin'. New Parks & Rec tonight. Holla!

A Pair of Lacks

2010-03-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

This week's (er, last week's, I guess?) word was "parallax," which, I found out, is not what it's called when you have two lacks, lacks being the long-eared beasts of the mountains of Bulgaria. That is a double-lacks. Now I know.

Turns out that the parallax effect is, according to Dictionary.com: "the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer." So, with this in mind, I set about sketching and came up with the idea of having overlapping, differing shapes that make up a coherent word. Like so:

As always, you can check out the words over here.

Quote For the Day

2010-03-16T01:09:00.000-07:00

"Not to say that there can't be true stories in pulps, but most true stories don't have good endings. Pulps need great endings. Mr. Gibson's tale doesn't have a good ending. In fact, it has no ending. The problem with the Tale of the Sweet Flower War is that Mr. Gibson ends it just when it's about to turn into pulp."

Gibson felt his blood rising. "I can't believe you're going to lecture me on what makes great pulp. I am pulp."

"You're not pulp. The Shadow is pulp. Doc Savage is pulp. In fact, I will tell you what makes pulp. Of course there's blood, cruelty, fear, mystery, vengeance, heroes and villains. That's just a good foundation. To make true pulp, really great stomach-churning, white-knuckle, turn-your-hair-white pulp, you have to fill it with a pack of outright lies. Secret identities and disguises." Dent began ticking off the items on his fingers to emphasize the point he was making. "The Yellow Peril. Super-weapons. Global schemes. Hideous deaths. Cliff-hanging escapes. These are the packs of lies you won't find in any slick or glossy or literary hard-cover bestseller. Horrors from the grave. Lost lands. Overwhelming odds. Impossible heroics. Unflagging courage."

---

From The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont, wherein the authors of The Shadow and Doc Savage have to solve the mysterious murder of H.P. Lovecraft while L. Ron Hubbard tags along and annoys them. So yeah, I'm already in the tank for this book.

It's A Sad & Beautiful World

2010-03-07T10:34:00.001-08:00

So, Mark Linkous is gone. Suicide. If his name isn't immediately familiar to you, I'm not surprised, and that's a shame. Under the moniker Sparklehorse, Linkous produced four fantastically sad, beautiful and broken albums as well as the Dark Night of the Soul collaboration with producer Danger Mouse and film-maker David Lynch and an In the Fishtank collaboration with laptop musician Christian Fennesz.

Linkous was one of our favorites around here. In fact, Sparklehorse was part of the inspiration of naming our Etsy shop. His It's A Wonderful Life and Good Morning Spider records were the soundtrack for the early days of our marriage and have accompanied us on nearly every driving trip we've taken. His music is perfectly suited to long stretches of Western highway, the blue sky opening up over red mountains. I think that "The Most Beautiful Widow In Town," from 1995's Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is one of the most beautiful songs ever written by a human being. Don't believe me? Give it a listen. Lines like "may all your days be gold, my child," or "it's a hard world for little things" have informed our art and our lives. He was a big deal for us. We will miss him.

As of now, all we know is that he took his own life. As to the whys and wherefores, that's between Mark and his creator. He was obviously a profoundly sad guy, and this isn't the first time he has tried to get out of this world. A previous suicide attempt left him with limited mobility in his legs and he's struggled with substance abuse and alcoholism for a long time. It shouldn't come as a shock that he took his life, but it's still unexpected, shocking and sad. I hope he finds something better than what he had here.

Like any artist who leaves us, Linkous left us behind with his work, a collection of, to borrow one of his phrases, "sad and beautiful" albums. You could do a lot worse than to pick one of them up and give it a few listens.

So, so long, Mark. "There's a heaven and a star for you." Sleep well.

"I'm So Tired Of All These Star Wars."

2010-03-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

So I'm playing in a Star Wars roleplaying gaming group again. Basically, Star Wars roleplaying is like Dungeons & Dragons only waaay more awesome. It's been a blast. So far, my character has been almost blown out of a hull breach into the cold vacuum of space, been knocked unconscious in a blaster fight, helped a kidnapped stand-up comic escape, spent the night in jail (ssspace jail, that is) after threatening a mid-level bureaucrat and attempting to bribe some Coruscant cops and then finally, upon release, broke into aforementioned bureaucrat's palatial penthouse to steal a very important MacGuffin, but not before reprogramming a security droid to start blasting the flesh-and-blood security guards watching the cameras and patrolling the apartment.

Like I said, waaay more awesome.

Anyway, so I had this idea for some shirts for the guys I game with. You know, for when we're not dressing up like Chewbaccas and Slave Leias and nerding it up with our 20-, 10-, 8-, 6- and 4-sided die. (J/K, we don't dress up. … Or do we? No really, we don't.) Anyway, so here's the mock-up of the shirt design. I'll post some pics of the real deals once I get them printed:

And if you're wondering, the post title comes from this Upright Citizen's Brigade sketch:

Alright, I gotta go level my guy up before tonight's session. Peace and may the mamma jammin' force be with y'all.

Bowler Dash

2010-03-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

So, this week's word is "balderdash." For some reason, it makes me think of a fat guy chasing his bowler hat down a street. Hence, "bowler-dash." I know, I know. I'm seeking professional help. Anyway, here it is:

Check out the other entries here. Seriously, this is fun stuff.

Lost Talk

2010-03-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

First off, SPOILER ALERT. If you're not caught up on Lost or are planning on watching it all after it's wrapped or whatever, please don't read any further. You have been warned.

So I asked you to ask my Lost questions. Because I am a nerd and a glutton for punishment. So let's try and figure all this out, shall we?

First off, Alli asks:

do you think libby is david's mother? since her old husband's name was david before she gave david's boat to desmond?
If I were a betting man, I'd wager that David's mom is Juliet. And that her and Sawyer are gonna be meeting for coffee sometime soon. They'll go Dutch.

does it matter?
Maybe?

will jack ever cut his hair?
I don't know. But has anybody else been sort of distracted by Jack's hair this season? Does it look weird to anybody else with that slight Superman spitcurl he's got going on? Has he always had that?

why is the island underwater?
Two possibilities.

1. If Jack's plan worked and the hydrogen bomb went off in 1977, that may have caused the Island to sink.

or, 2. It's because of something that we haven't seen yet and this guy's theory is totally right. (Hint: I think this guy's theory is totally right. I've been trying to say what he's said in that post all season – that the "flash-sideways" is the castaways' reward for … something*, and that it's their second chance to get things right post-purgatorial Island tour of duty – but we'll see. Every time I think I have this show pinned down, they pull the rug out from under me, roll me up in said rug and then throw me down a hill.)

I still think that Jack's season five explodo-plan was what caused "The Incident," referred to in those Dharma videos and that Daniel Faraday was being a good time-cop to the end when he talked Jack into nuking the Swan station.

Did that help?

Next up, Rose says:

you already answered some questions (thank you) but i have more!
walt is in NY, right? but where is he in this story? didn't the others say he was the chosen one? did that story already resolve itself and i just forgot it did?
Oh man, Walt. I think he's one of those things, like Libby or Ana Lucia, that were intended to be a whole lot more for the show but due to physical realities – ie. the actor who portrays Walt growing radically over the first two seasons, the actresses who play Ana Lucia and Libby getting busted for DUI – had to fall by the wayside.

The "in game," No Prize, response to this is that Ben kinda sorta gave the producers a way out when he let Michael and Walt go by saying that Walt was more powerful than they thought, so they were glad to be done with him. My feeling is that the "OMZ, Walt is soooo like powerful and stuff, dudes!" plotline is dead and that our little glimpse of him in season five was his send-off, his "happily ever after," as it were.

fake john locke (smoke monster, whoever you want to call him) was chasing that boy. that's jacob, right? why could sawyer see him?
My money would be that that was some sort of a manifestation of Jacob, though why he appeared to Flocke ("Fake Locke." Get it?) as a bloody little boy in weird Bible pageant robes instead of the way we've been seeing him is anyone's guess. I definitely got a Cain and Abel/Jacob and Esau vibe off of that whole thing, though.

As far as why Sawyer could see him and not, say Richard earlier in the episode, maybe it's because Sawyer (or "Ford," I guess) is a Candidate?

and ditto on the island being underwater. why?
See above.

And she had some more after this week's totally kick@$$ episode, "Sundown":

how are the smoke monster dude and jacob tied to the island?
I theorize a little further down. Look for the * under the questions.

why was jacob looking for candidates? is he just looking for one candidate?
See answer to above question.

who is coming to the island? who was jacob waiting for?
I think Jacob has who he's been waiting for. I think the Lighthouse trip was a ruse to get Jack thinking about why Jacob would be interested in him and his little crew.

why is everyone connected to the island?
Fate, as Charlie wrote on his knuckle wraps. The Oceanic passengers are "ka-tet," to borrow a phrase from one of the show's influential texts.

did ben make a deal with the smoke monster dude?
We're not entirely sure what happened to Ben after the fracas at the Temple, right? He was unaccounted for, if I remember correctly. Ben'll find some way to survive, though, don't worry about that.

what happened to richard alpert?
We shall see. My guess is that he was either a captain or a slave on the Black Rock, another group of people brought to the Island so that Jacob and Flocke can play their giant Backgammon game with them, each unwilling to concede to each others' point regarding the true nature of humanity.

will jin and sun be separated in the flash sideways story as well?
Jin and Sun as characters seem to be important only as they relate to each other spatially. Half of their stories have been them trying to get back together, either physically or emotionally. And since Jin was in Sideways-Keamy's fridge, I'd say that their story in this world is also going to be "How do they get back together?"

***

And that's that. Anybody else want to play? Comment away.

_______

* Maybe Smokey wins. Maybe he's the "good guy" here (or as close to a "good guy" as this show gets) and they sink the Island to protect it/destroy it. Maybe this is what Jacob wants, a la Jack's lighthouse tantrum. Maybe this sets both Smokey and Jacob free from whatever's chaining them to the Island. (Not unklike how their tenure on the Island will hopefully set the Oceanic passengers free from their personal demons, right?) Maybe neither of them is pure evil or purely good. (It wouldn't be the first time this show has set someone up as the ultimate evil only to find that they're just misunderstood, right Ben Linus?)

Maybe they're both cursed and trapped on the Island, in Purgatory, waiting to be freed. Maybe this group of castaways has just the right mix of people to set them free this time, to be the ones who finish the game whose end they've been progressing toward. Maybe I'm also full of crap. Only time will tell.

Fangs and Growling

2010-03-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

It's March, baby! So, there's a new mix for you. This one's a total garage rocker. Tooth-kickin' music. Here's the cover:

Sadie named this one. Pretty catchy, right? This one's got songs from The Soft Pack, White Denim, Love, Sloan, Iggy Pop, King Khan & The Shrines, Belle & Sebastian, Ben Folds Five, Dungen, Nirvana, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Jay Reatard, Lyres, The Dirtbombs and Reigning Sound. You'll shake yr hips for sure.

You can download it here and find many more mixes on the Master List. Enjoy!

Let's Get Lost

2010-02-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since we did one of these, hasn't it? So let's do this. What questions do you have about my favorite show and yours, Lost, now that the Final Season's upon us? Leave your question in the comment section and in my next post, I'll answer your questions to the best of my limited ability.

Remember: there's no such thing as a stupid question. Well, okay, there is, but I promise not to make fun of you too much if you should happen to ask one.

It's French For "Nickname"

2010-02-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

New word up at Best Mark My Words. The word is "sobriquet." It's French for nickname. Mine's all bouncy and fun, like a nickname should be:

Also, look at those other ones! They're freaking awesome! One of these weeks I will expose myself as the talentless charlatan that I am next to guys like this.

The Family That Rocks Together, uh, Socks Together?

2010-02-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

So Target had (has? I dunno. Check yr Target. Maybe they still have some.) a steal of a price on Beatles Rock Band the other day, so after some back and forth, Candace and I broke down and snatched it up. We'd been watching it for a while now and it finally went down to a reasonable price, so it came home with us the other day. It was pretty much the best decision ever. I mean, check these girls out?

All Gussied Up

2010-02-18T19:25:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks back, the indefatigable Rob Harrigan of Undercard Productions took a break from being awesome to invite me to be a contributor to his new weekly hand-lettering challenge blog, Best Mark My Words. I still can't believe he invited me to participate.

So yeah, every week we're given a word and have to hand-letter said word. The first rule of BMMW is that your word is hand-drawn. Other than that, it's pretty much open. Our first word was "gussy." Here's my entry:

To see the others for last week, go here. As you can see, it's a pretty fun thing and you'd have to be a fool not to add it to your reader. A fool, I say.

Like I said, this is all Rob. Go stop by (and follow) his blog; you won't regret it. And if you're in the market for some seriously great illustration, his wife, Stephanie Buscema, has a website and blog and a rocking Etsy shop.

Anyway, I'm out. I think there's a Curling match on tonight or something. I'm totally ga-ga for that sport right now.

New News

2010-02-15T20:41:00.000-08:00

It's true. I start full-time at a big advertising and design agency here in Vegas next Monday. We're really excited around here. It's been a crazy five months and it's good to have this settled so we can start feeling that much more solid here in Vegas. I'm a little nervous cuz, you know, new job, new co-workers, new environment, new clients, etc. It's like going to a new school only with less Trapper Keepers and hopefully nobody will stuff me into a locker.

So anyway, we're very happy and very grateful. Big thanks to all of you who sent kind words, sent e-mails to friends and contacts, said prayers on our behalf and just generally were awesome people. If we ever run into each other in real life, remind me to hug you. Cuz I will. I totally will.

Anyway, so this week's gonna be our last Goonie weekend before things get real again. If anybody wants to hang out, this would be the week to do it. But not too much, cuz I'm gonna try and fit all the Xbox I can into this next week, cuz who knows what the future holds?

Nobody, that's who.

So yeah, I got a job. Wheee!!! It was inevitable, really. I mean, who can resist a face like this:

My Valentine

2010-02-13T19:39:00.000-08:00

Hey, Internet. Happy Valentine's Day. If you'll indulge me for a post, I'd like to talk a little bit about my Valentine. That's her in the picture. Isn't she pretty? Yeah, I know, she's totally out of my league, but I'm not complaining. Also, aren't my eyes squinty?

I won't bore you by rehashing the details of how we met and fell in love, but suffice it to say that it's pretty epic. Candace has her version of the story here, and you can read the true story here, if you'd like. The bottom line is: We met. We fell in love. We're living happily ever after.

I'm very grateful for Candace. I'm a weird, moody, nerdy, needy person and there are very few people in this world that I feel really "get" me and Candace is at the top of the list of those type of people. I can't believe that I found such a person, but here we are. Add to that the fact that she's fun, smart, creative, caring, supportive and willing to say hard things to make you better, well, you can see why I took advantage of her lapse in judgment and married her for time and eternity.

Also, she is awesome.

Like I said earlier, I'm a weird guy. I'm a romantic, but not in a "bouquet of roses," type of way. (Besides, we all know that roses smell like poo-poo-poo, right Outkast?) I'm more of a "I made you a mixtape," type. So excuse me if this goes right over your head, but I'd like to briefly share a song with you. It's called "Peephole," and it's the penultimate track off of Guided By Voices' excellent Bee Thousand album. It's a short song, less than a minute-and-a-half, but I think it's one of the most romantic things I've heard. It's one of those songs that, for me at least, captures what it means to really love somebody. Here are the lyrics:

Give me the cost of the albatross
And wear it 'round your neck for size.
Don't let it get you down,
I'm looking inside your house
And oh, and it smells so nice.
Your house always looks so nice.

Maybe they're twice as high, laughing.
Maybe the time is right, you know.
Promise me not to leave.
I'm looking inside your brain,
And […], it's a cluttered mess.
I love you, I must confess.

It's that last couplet that punches me in the gut. "I'm looking inside your brain and … it's a cluttered mess," followed by "I love you, I must confess." To look inside somebody and have them look inside you and see just how supremely crazy and messed-up and broken you are and to still have them love you despite - and maybe because of - all that debris, for me, that's love. That's real, true, abiding and everlasting love.

So, Candace, thanks for putting up with the mess that is my brain, the ball of crazy that is me. I love you like tons. Thanks for helping me straighten my brain up a little. Even if it's only a small corner of the place, it's progress, right? And besides, we have forever, you and me.

Happy Valentine's day, you modern lovers.

*******

Here's the track in question, if you want to listen to it:

Peep-Hole - Guided By Voices

Better Late Than Never, Right?

2010-02-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

February's mixtape! Did you think I was lying when I said I'd get it done? Well, here it is, because I don't lie, man:

This mix pretty much rocks. Harlem, TMBG, a Jens Lekman cover, the VU, Cake, Vampire Weekend, the Outsiders, Spoon and lots more.

01. "What's broken can always be fixed, and what's fixed can always be broken."
02. "I'm just as see-through as Casper the Ghost."
03. "And those golden faces are under 25."
04. "Hear me baby sayin' I'm comin' home."
05. "I'm not a real doctor but I am a real worm. I am an actual worm. I live like a worm."
06. "A doctor said 'Your wounds!' and stitched up his broken ego."
07. "Love ain't far."
08. "Well, a lot of good cars are Japanese, but when we're driving far I need my baby here with me."
09. "Those victory laps and Sgt. Pepper tones."
10. "Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica."
11. "You were born with ten fingers and you're gonna use em all."
12. "This couldn't be more ghetto."
13. "And on the final day of our Eastern journey, we went and talked to a psychic attorney."
14. "Do the Twist & Stomp, the Mashed Potato, too. Any old dance that you wanna do."
15. "Read everything you can read and learn everything you can learn."
16. "I have my brown sound jacket, Queen of Call Collect on my arm."
17. "It is a shame, it is a pity when you can't raise the energy to get from A to B."
18. "No more cops left to mess you around, no more dreams of mystery chords."
19. "Two TV sets and two Cadillac cars? That ain't gonna help me at all. Not one tiny bit."
20. "So who's the people with the peepholes in their smiles?"

***

Download it here. The Master List is here and it's been updated for all recent Brigade member mixes, which, by the way, anybody else want to join?

The State of the Dylan Address

2010-02-04T22:45:00.000-08:00

The full text of Dylan Todd's State of the Dylan Address, as transcribed by the Basement of the House He's Living In:

Good evening, Madame Internet, eavesdropping security organizations, Google web-crawling robots and distinguished blog followers. We are gathered together tonight to discuss the state of the Dylan, as our Constitution - which I just wrote here on this napkin and, I gotta be honest, it pretty good stuff - states we must do from time to time. See, in a week, I will be having another birthday. I'll be turning 33. Treinta y tres, mi amigos.

Which, I mean, think about that. That's almost starting to get old. I mean, I'm old enough that bands I loved in high school (The Pixies! Pavement!) are having reunion tours. I'm old enough that I remember when Dennis Miller was incisive and relevant. I remember when Weezer wasn't a cuss word. I'm old enough to look at the prices of things and tell whatever kid happens to be walking by that when I was a kid, comics cost 75 cents. It's enough to make a fella take stock of what he's accomplished, what he's got going on and what he's working toward.

Okay, sounds fair. Let's do this.

First off, the elephant in the room: I have no job. I have no job during the worst economic environment since the Great Depression. I'm living with (pronounced: "leeching off of") family, in a basement, while I look for work after moving my family, quite suddenly, cross-country. Yaaaay! That said, we're in surprisingly good spirits and I'm supremely confident I'll find something and soon. I mean, not to be all conceited, but I'm good at what I do and I know I'll find a job that will be creatively satisfying and also help me support my family. If not, there's always my first love, the forgotten trade of competitive scrimshawing.

And I have a lot of things to be thankful for/proud of. I've graduated from college with pretty good grades, played in a band, hunted the mighty Yeti, married a great woman who is awesome and, man, I have a beautiful family. Seriously, I'm not sure how I lucked out with the pretty girls I'm surrounded by every day, but I'm glad I did. The other day I caught myself singing, unironically and loudly, the theme song to Growing Pains. Okay, maybe it was a little ironic and maybe it was "incredibly loud," as opposed to just "loudly," but still.

There's a lot to look forward to for Dylan. For example - and you'll find this either pathetic or endearing - Lost is back on TV for its last season and it's just as mind-blowingly rad as it is inscrutable. And there's also the Star Wars roleplaying group we're starting up again which I gotta admit, I'm pretty excited about. And I might start a band. We'll see. We're getting a new computer soon, so that's exciting. Oh! And dudes! I have an Xbox 360! And in May, Candace and I will celebrate 10 years - A DECADE, MAN - of marriage. I'm like the king of the World, A.K.A., this dude.

So that's where Dylan is right now. As you can see, I am pleased to report that the state of the Dylan is strong. Strong like ox. Thank you. And good night.

The Man of Bronze & His Fabulous Five

2010-01-28T09:11:00.000-08:00

I've posted links to this slideshow elsewhere, but I figured I'd share it here as well, just for kicks. It's my collection of Doc Savage paperbacks. Check them out:

I love Doc Savage. I'm not even sure why, but there's just something awesome about that dude that captivates me. He's a mixture of brains, brawn and bizarre. He's concentrated rad. Doc, along with his pulp hero brethren, are the bridge between stuff like H.G. Welles' sci-fi, Bram Sroker's horror and Arthur Conan Doyles' mysteries and the brightly-colored superheroes that would eventually put them out of business. (For some great meta-commentary on this, pick up Warren Ellis' fantastic Planetary series, which has recently wrapped up and is totally mega-cool. Also, for a look at an attempt to revitalize this type of hero, check out the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which fills me with the same sense of excitement and giddiness when I think about it. Additionally, Philip Jose Farmer's Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life - a fictional biography - is a really great, fun ride. It's the start of his Wold Newton Universe, which manages to tie all of these strains of fantastic fiction together into a cohesive whole.)

And those covers! These books are worth the price I pay for them for the stories those covers conjure. Land of Always-Night? He Could Stop the World? Quest of the Spider? Daaaang. That's some heavy-duty stuff there. Plus the O.C.D. completist inside of me sees those numbers on the covers and wonders, "Can I get them all? I bet I can." I even made a chart in the back of my pocket notebook of which ones I have and which ones I need. I know, I know; I'm nuts. I have a sickness.

I lucked out and found a used bookstore here in Vegas who had a cache of these and wiped them out over the last month or so, worried the whole time that somebody would get to them first because, you know, there's a market our there for decades-old pulp paperbacks? Man, I'm crazy. Hopefully this score should sate my appetite for the next little bit, but uh, if you stumble on any of them while you're out and about (they're usually racked with Sci-Fi, authored by Kenneth Robeson), well, let me know.

Anyway, that's Doc Savage and why I think he's cool.

Wished I Was A Giant

2010-01-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

So our computer's still dead, which explains the lack of posting. At least that's my excuse. And I should probably be up front with you and let you know that, sadly, February's mix will be delayed until we get our new computer up and running. I promise you you'll get one though. Word is bond.

And just to set the record straight, as some of you expressed worry in my Rock & Roll Community College post, the monthly mixes are still a "go." I'm fully committed to them for the forseeable future.

Anyway, I'm alive. In the meantime, enjoy this video of Guided By Voices doing "Wished I Was A Giant" at a soundcheck.

Aw Yeah

2010-01-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a jam for your day. It's Otis Redding protege Arthur Conley performing his smash hit "Sweet Soul Music," wherein he does a pretty thorough run-down of who's-who in soul. Just a great track, infused with even more energy in this live version. That's the Stax band/Booker T & the MG's backing him up. Ignore the crawl at the bottom of the screen and listen to these dudes roll.

The title is also shared with this book that I'm 3/4ths of the way through. It's a great look at the Atlantic/Stax/Goldwax/etc. period. Recommended if you want to put the era in context.

Rockrockrockrock Rock & Roll, uh, Community College

2010-01-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

Dang man. So our computer's totally taking a dump. It might be dying, in fact. This sucks for reals though. Especially since I was working on some pretty epic stuff to start hitting here. Stuff that, had it been able to be posted, most likely would have blown your mind to pieces, so maybe it's for the best, as I would hate for you to explode your head all over your computer screen, thereby causing your computer to die as well. So yeah.

Okay, not really, but still.

But anyway, I guess I'll spoil my surprise and let you in on one of the things I was working on for the blog. See, you guys know I love me some music. I mean, it's on my mind a lot. It takes up a large part of my thoughts and time and, well, hard-drive space. I read books about it, I watch movies about it, I even read comics about it. (Which, by the way, you should totally read Gipi's Garage Band. It looks like being in a band feels.) I make a mixtape every month and if you give me a chance, I will talk your ear off about rock and roll in all it's variant strains.

And now I'm basically going to do just that, only, uh, electronically.

So the plan is this: once a week I'm going to talk about an album you should listen to. Not because I'm cooler than you or anything, but I mean, I got all this knowledge and I feel like I should share it with all y'all cuz that's the kind of guy I am. If you read something that sounds like something you'd be into, track it down. If not, at least I'm posting something here, right.

I was starting to compile my list of albums when our computer started to shuffle off to the digital afterlife, but it will encompass stuff you've probably already heard of - like the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds - and some stuff you've probably never heard of - like Papas Fritas' Helioself or Caetano Veloso's self-titled 1969 album - and all points in-between. Think of it like a community college Rock & Roll History class taught by someone who is woefully unqualified to teach, and despite his obvious (and borderline creepy) enthusiasm you can't help but shake the feeling that he's making all of this up as he goes along and you heard a rumor that he's living out of his 1974 Honda Civic hatchback and he's wanted for smuggling exotic animals out of Turkmenistan or something equally weird.

Or basically, a community college Rock & Roll History class.

Or, to make even less sense, think of it like Oprah's Book Club only with records instead of books and a tall, pasty, red-headed dude instead of Oprah. Opie's Record Club, maybe?

So yeah, that's the plan. The start date is entirely dependent on our computer situation, but that's where we're headed here on Big Red Robot. I mean, there's other stuff that'll be going down, but this is a new thing that I'm feeling pretty psyched about. Let me know in the comments what you think. And if there's anything else you want or need more of here at BRR, let me know that, too. I'm always on the lookout for stuff to blog about.

Saturday Snapshot: Master

2010-01-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

Vending machine at Smith's.

Quick Update

2010-01-01T20:20:00.000-08:00

Hey, I wasn't totally in love with the previous cover, so I updated the cover art for The Year We Make Contact. Please replace the old cover with this sexier version:

That is all.

Diggin' the New

2010-01-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

It's twenty-ten, people. It's the friggin' future. There is a science fiction movie with this year AS ITS TITLE. THE FUTURE!!! I'm ready. Are you?

I'm not sure I have any any real resolutions beyond getting a job, continuing to make cool stuff/be a good dad/husband/person and losing all this layoff weight. (For reals, I'm getting waaay too chubby. That's what happens when you're sort of depressed and live in close proximity to an In N' Out Burger.)

Sure, there's other stuff I'd like to do this year – stuff like starting a band or blogging more or going to Comic-con – but as far as tangible goals, I think I'll just focus on those three things. Oh, and fighting evil and injustice. Can't forget that. So I'll just focus on those four things. Keep it simple, you know?

Oh, but then there's my life-long goal of taming a narwhal. And I can't forget about exploring the essence within. And liberating Pajamastan. And break-dancing on the moon. Or writing the Great American Dyslexic Werewolf Novel. (That's right, Wolf-Were, the Dyslexic Werewolf I'm going to finally write you!) Or developing my latent psychic abilities. Or running for political office despite the fact that I'm 1/64th rhinoceros and have an untreated Doc Savage paperback addiction and am a documented Tron-unist. And learning to play the banjo should probably go on the list, too. Along with: growing a Yosemite Sam mustache, setting the land speed record in an Albertson's shopping cart while all hopped up on Pixie Stix and sarsaparilla and finally, throat-punching Dick Cheney.

Oh, and getting my turntable fixed. May as well add that to the list.

So yeah, I guess I have some work to do this year. How about you? what are you working on in 2010?

So This Is the New Year

2009-12-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

Out with the old, in with the new. This mix was a little tough to pin down. I scrapped probably four mixes before finally just deciding to start the artwork to try and figure out what kind of mix I wanted to make. So this hot tranny mess is the responsible party if you don't end up loving this mix as much as I do:

I wanted a mix that sounded like putting the past to sleep while gettin' all Blade Runner up in this joint. Future soundz. Bleeding chrome bangin' robots and light trails across a neon skyline.

There are some jams on here, a few longer tracks, a couple weird things. It's a little spacey and silver. I had initially hoped to not reuse artists I'd used a lot on previous mixes, but the tracks from Hot Chip, the Zombies, Ganglians and the B-52's fit like astronaut gloves, so here they are. We've also got some Yeasayer, M83, Caribou, Washed Out, Stereolab, Tom Zé, Suburban Lawns, Os Mutantes, Cornelius, Akron/Family, Microphones, Beach House, Hum, Maps & Atlases, Gomez and Walkmen.

So sit back, put some headphones on and let's bury the decaying corpse of 2009. Bring on 2010. Let's make some 3/2/1 contact. Let's make this year our year.

Tracklist:

01. "Last year was a hard year, for such a long time."
02. "It’s a New Year, I’m glad to be here."
03. "Blue Christmas lights tell us stories about ourselves."
04. "Concentrate, don't make a sound. We'll psychokinetically pull one down."
05. "And when I pray it's all begun."
06. "Sold my soul to pay the rent."
07. "The music's loud in your room; turn it down."
08. "You will not catch your unknown."
09. "…"
10. "Who's gonna take it like this? No way."
11. "One chance to leave it all and swim down."
12. "I hear voices from the outside."
13. "I love computers and hot tamales."
14. "Via this paradox that space can be attained."
15. "All in the name of what we're not sure."
16. "…"
17. "And I walked aimlessly around with a flaming pumpkin head."
18. "I'd like your face gone and in its place the sun."
19. "Twenty-ten."
20. "All your worried days are gone. This will be our year."

*******

Download it here. I'm using a new service this time around. Let me know if you have problems with it. And as usual, feel free to share this with your friends, enemies, pets and house plants.

Cheers.

Tune For Tuesday

2009-12-29T12:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a jam for you.

Jon Lucien's "Would You Believe in Me," from the 1973 album, Rashida. The whole album's like this, a smooth mix of tropicalia and soul. It's worth tracking down if you're into awesome stuff.

The 2009 Rundown

2009-12-22T23:02:00.000-08:00

So a little while back, I Tweeted about how 2009 has pretty much sucked and how I was looking forward to a (hopefully better) 2010. Over on Facebook, my negative attitude sorta got called out, and for good reason. I was being a bit of a baby. 2009 wasn't so bad, right? I mean, besides some rather unfortunate events for our family, there have been some pretty awesome things this year.

For example:

In music, we got the Dirty Projectors' dizzying Bitte Orca, the stoner wail of Ganglians' Monster Head Room, the trippy and bouncy Merriweather Post Pavilion from Animal Collective and the pure pop perfection of Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. You can download my 2009 Favorites mix by clicking here.

In movies, we got the joybomb of the Bad Robot crew's Star Trek reboot, the touching and adventurous Up, the cool comedic caper flick Sparrow and the visceral and (yeah) mind-blowing Avatar. Whatever Works was Woody Allen's funniest in years, The Brothers Bloom was an indie globe-trotting con film with charm to spare and Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' Where the Wild Things Are moved the heck out of me. But out of all that emerge my two favorite films: the gloriously grisly and giddy Inglorious Basterds and the immaculate messiness that is Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox. Both films reminded me why I love movies (and their respective directors) and left me smiling in the dark like a friggin' kid.

On the comics front, I made my way through Kirby's sprawling Fourth World opus and Grant Morrison's love letter to it, Final Crisis. I read the first three issues of Brandon Graham's King City and can't say enough good about it, hacked through Naoki Uraswawa's thrilling manga series Monster and explored the high seas with Kevin Cannon's Far Arden. David Mazzuchelli's Asterios Polyp will get some ink spilled over it's amazingness, and rightfully so. It's pretty much perfect in every way. I also read (and laughed a lot at) James Kolchaka's American Elf diaries and enjoyed the heck out of Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple's Omega the Unknown. And let's not forget that this year brought us Grant Morison and Cameron Stewart's Seaguy: Slaves Of Mickey Eye and the latest installment of Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim saga: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe Oh, and Let's Be Friends Again published their first volume of strips, Under Pressure, which can be purchased here. Buy three.

Meanwhile on the internet, Ian Cognito's Zamboni Soundtracks continues to be the go-to place for amazing music. Seriously. And then there was the cosmic slop that is HOBODARKSEID, who, it turns out, was (is?) actually Matt Fraction in disguise. I also should give a shout-out to the great If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, which is pretty much the epitome of cool.

I also read some great books: Haruki Murakami's Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was pretty much awesome, John Hodgman's Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require are hilarious and filled with facts you need to know. Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling took me for-ev-errr to finish, but was definitely worth it and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers dispels the myth of the "self-made man." I also managed to get my nerdy little paws on some Doc Savage paperbacks.

On the tube, we had the mind-blowing penultimate season of Lost, Parks & Recreation found it's legs and Glee hooked me despite the constant feeling that I really shouldn't be liking it. Community started kicking straight out the gate while 30 Rock continued to make me almost pee myself. Okay, so I peed a little. Okay, so I peed a lot. Anyway, this year also saw our family get all reTARDISed for Doctor Who, Star Wars: the Clone Wars, Marvel's Superhero Squad and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

Creatively, 2009 saw the production of 12 Big Red Robot Montly Mixtapes plus some bonus ones (all of which are available via the Master List) as well as their covers. I did the album art for Numbers Like Pi and Time & Space's releases, the cover for the aforementioned Let's Be Friends Again collection, and had the honor of spearheading the image campaign for the 33rd Cleveland International Film Festival, all of which can be viewed at my revamped website or in my Flickr stream. I also opened my Etsy shop, Tuff Industries and we saw lots of success with Sparkle Power.

Personally, yeah, poop happened, but when you add it all up, I really don't have all that much to complain about. I have a beautiful wife, lovely girls, family and friends who love and support me my family and a half dozen Doc Savage paperbacks. I'm healthy, handsome and talented. I'm good enough, smart enough and doggonnit, people (hopefully) like me.

So yeah, I'm hoping for a better 2010, but 2009, you weren't so bad after all. You had some awesome stuff inside of you. So come on, let's hug. There we go. That's the stuff.

It's the Anthem

2009-12-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

Getcher darn hands up.

The Beginning of the End

2009-12-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

Damon Lindelof: But it makes you understand why some people go to church every Sunday and some people are atheists. Some people need Lost to have a scientific explanation for everything, and that's why our viewership now is what it is – because the people who needed there to be a scientific explanation for everything stopped watching. They were like, "Okay – the show has now proven my theory wrong." This is another joke masking a true terror for us – we're doing the last season of the show now, and this season is where you get your answers. And we're not waiting until the last episode – the answers start coming fairly fast and furious right out of the gate. But in a lot of ways, the storytelling this year is just us telling people that they were wrong. They've built up theories for five years. When a show like this gets to a certain point and then it's "Oh, man, we were canceled," people get to bring their theories with them to the grave. With us, it's basically like, "No – you're wrong." And some people may have been right. Who knows?

From GQ's Geekdoom's Council of Elders round-table discussion with the Bad Robot team. Part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

As long as we're discussing the last season of Lost here, is anybody else sort of terrified by the prospect of this show ending? Or am I just too emotionally invested in this thing? Because I truly love this show and I worry that there won't be anything to satisfactorily replace it once it's gone.

The Ghost of Christmas Presents, Part 3

2009-12-10T08:11:00.000-08:00

Last, but not least, Volume 3:

So, what do you think? Are you ready for the holidays yet? Should there be a Volume 4 next year? Which track was the biggest surprise for you?

*******

Download all three:

Volume 1: I Would Never Steal From Santa Here
Volume 2: Sleigh Bells In the Air Here
Volume 3: It's the Perfect Gift Idea Here

The Ghost of Christmas Presents, Part 2

2009-12-08T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here's Round 2.

It's more subdued than Volume 1, more for cold, snowy nights when it's all quiet in the house. You can download it here. Hope you're enjoying the holiday season. Check back later this week for Volume 3.

The Ghost of Christmas Presents, Part 1

2009-12-04T09:37:00.000-08:00

So here's the first of three Christmas/holiday/winter mixes from yours truly.

Download it here and feel free to leave a comment on how great it is. Or don't. Happy holidays, y'all!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2009-12-01T08:06:00.000-08:00

The 2009 Favorites mix. Download it here.

As with las year, I'm not sure if these are "The Best" (say it like Nacho Libre would) albums I've heard this year, but they're the ones I've listened to the most. It was a tough process to get it down to 20 albums and some sad cuts had to me made (sorry A.C. Newman's Get Guilty, Throw Me the Statue's Creaturesque and Franz Ferdinand's Tonight), but I think it's a great mix of music for you to enjoy.

Think of it like one of those meat and cheese samplers you get at the holidays; eat a little bit of everything and come back for more if you like anything you try.

*******

TRACK TITLE / BAND / ALBUM

01 / "Cannibal Resource" / Dirty Projectors / Bitte Orca
Probably my favorite album of 2010. It's a dizzying mix of indie rock, world beats and, strangely enough, R&B; sometimes all at once. It may take a listen or two to click, but once it does, it really takes over.

02 / "I Start To Run" / White Denim / Fits
Wow, here's a slammin' psychedelic album. Like Jimi Hendrix fronting Led Zeppelin, played at double speed.

03 / "Heart Sweats" / Japandroids / Post-Nothing
Hooky, hopeful and noisy, Japandroids have the post-emo, Death From Above 1979 thing locked down. It's Fist-Shaking Rock of the finest vintage.

04 / "Slap Dash For No Cash" / Art Brut / Art Brut vs. Satan
Frank Black produced it, but it's by no means a slick sell-out album. "Cool your warm jets, Brian Eno," indeed. Songs about love, rock, loving rock and an inability to grow up. In other words, an Art Brut album.

05 / "Aquarius Sabotage" / The Flaming Lips / Embryonic
Not to slight their last two albums, but this is the album I've been waiting for from these guys. Loose, weird and meandering, it feels less deliberate and polished than Yoshimi or At War With the Mystics and more in the vein of experimental work like Zaireeka or the Okie Noodling soundtrack.

06 / "Lasso" / Phoenix / Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Man, just when you think these guys have made the album of their career, they go ahead and top it. Every bit as solid as It's Never Been Like That. There isn't a bad track on here.

07 / "Little Girl (feat. Julian Casablancas)" / Sparklehorse + Danger Mouse / Dark Night of the Soul
The best album that didn't actually come out. Manages to play to the strengths of each guest vocalist (for example, the Jason Lytle tracks sound more like Grandaddy than anything off of his limp solo album, Yours Truly, the Commuter) while still sounding like a collaboration between two guys who really excel at what they do. It's an eerie, groovy record and definitely worth breaking Federal copyright law for.

08 / "Love Comes And Goes" / Lee Fields & The Expressions / My World
Daaang, this album is slick. Soulful, smooth and timeless, it's a great record for any occasion. Folding laundry? Check. Spending time with your special someone? Check. Bare-knuckle fighting a crazed mountain lion while wearing a fine Italian suit? Check and mate.

09 / "Helium Hearts" / Super Furry Animals / Dark Days, Light Years
More focused than their last couple of albums, SFA offer up another album of mutant Welsh space rock. If you're not already a fan, this one probably won't convert you, but if you like what they do, this is one to pick up.

10 / "One Machine, One Long Fight" / Lou Barlow / Goodnight Unknown
It's been four years since Barlow's last album under any name besides Dinosaur Jr. (and we all know that's pretty much J. Mascis' band), and that's a shame. Barlow's work - whether solo or with Sebadoh or the Folk Implosion - has always been really excellent and Goodnight Unknown is no exception. Lou Barlow, FTW.

11 / "Criminals" / Atlas Sound / Logos
A haunting, hypnotic waltz from Bradford Cox. It's the kind of music Ziggy Stardust would listen to if he got homesick for the cold vacuum of space.

12 / "My Girls" / Animal Collective / Merriweather Post Pavilion
I'm sure indie snobs will "like their earlier stuff before they sold out," better, but I firmly believe this is their best yet. Rich, textured and weird (while still listenable), it's an excellent little head trip and completely legal.

13 / "Courage" / The Whitest Boy Alive / Rules
Disco disco! Erlend Øye's other band (Kings of Convenience) may get all the girls a-sighin', but it's this band that gets me all lathered up. Dancey and laid-back, I dare you not to listen to this thing without catching yourself shaking something, anything whilst doing so.

Also, tell me the guy doesn't look like a slightly more hip version of Napoleon Dynamite.

14 / "Psalms 40:2" / The Mountain Goats / Life of the World to Come
More songs about desperate people facing down the inevitable. John Darnille has put together another set of moving, wry tales, this time with the Bible at the center of the stories. By no means a religious tract, it packs an emotional punch that can appeal to believers and heathens alike.

15 / "Cryin' Smoke" / Ganglians / Monster Head Room
Second favorite album of 2009. It's like some guys re-recording the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile in their shed. Druggy, smiling and goofy; real dumb angel stuff.

16 / "Lady Luck" / Richard Swift / Atlantic Ocean
A great collection of Harry Nilsson-esque singer-songwriter ditties, Richard Swift's sense of humor and solid songwriting earned him a place on the list. This track is especially good; it sounds like some lost 70's soul single.

17 / "Tender Torture" / Islands / Vapours
Last year's Arm's Way was a little too weird and inconsistent to land on my faves mix, but Vapours strips away the unnecessary in favor of hummable tunes, solid grooves and the expectedly obtuse lyrics.

18 / "If It's True" / Yo La Tengo / Popular Songs
Another set of classics from Hoboken's own Yo La Tengo. Seriously, these guys are the most consistently good band out there. I keep waiting for a dud of an album but it hasn't happened yet. If I have one complaint, it's that the requisite longer, droney songs are all sequenced at the back of the album, making it a little tiresome toward the end, but still, it's a dang good album.

19 / "More Of This" / Vetiver / Tight Knit
It was a tough call, choosing between this album and the Fruit Bats' The Ruminant Band, but in the end, this one won out. Really great mellow-ish folk from a really good band.

20 / "The Wizzzard" / Think About Life / Family
This one surprised me. It's like if TV On the Radio decided to start a Kool & the Gang cover band, which yeah, would be pretty radical. I've already used them twice this year on mixes (Warm Soundz and SMRJMZ), but here's another track because I think this album's super-dope.

*******

And that's my 2009 Favorites mix. What knocked yr socks off this year? Let me know in the comments section and as always, thanks for stopping by.

Free Bird

2009-11-26T14:28:00.000-08:00

Quick Question

2009-11-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I started work on a Holiday mix last night and ended up with a short list.

Of about 60 songs.

And this is before I broke out my Christmas CDs to put a few tracks from those on the list, and I know I have a few tracks from those that will make the list. (I mean, I have John Denver and the Muppets' A Christmas Together in there, man!) So, unless I make a lot of cuts of a lot of really good tracks, we're looking at the possibility of up to four mixes.

Is this dumb? Would you guys want a weekly Christmas music mix for the next month? Let me know in the comments section. Please help me out here. I don't want to make these if nobody wants them.

Crapshoot

2009-11-19T16:45:00.000-08:00

I swore in a Target restroom today. I said the ess-word. You know the one. S-H-I … Yeah, that one. I said it pretty loud, too. I didn't yell it, but it was definitely audible. Now, I'm not a restroom cusser. I'm not even really a cusser. So why was I standing in a handicapped stall in a Target restroom, cussing it up?

Well, mainly because it fit. It was what I was staring at: on the toilet seat and toilet, on the floor and, sadly, on my aged and comfy Converse All Stars, may they rest in peace. Oh, and it was all over my daughter, too, poor thing.

We were picking up a couple of things after dropping sister and mom off at school and the craft show (Going on all weekend! Go get some Sparkle Power merchandise! And yeah, I'm plugging a craft show while relating a poop story. You knew what I was when you picked me up.), respectively. You know, gettin' my Dad on. We looked through the electronics (Claire is not very good at the Xbox), the Christmas stuff and, finally, the toys. Every. Single. Toy.

We were playing with that Disney Princess display, the one where you spin the thingy around and push the pink flashing button and it plays a snippet of a song from each princess' movie.

So Claire's spinning the thingy, pressing the button, dancing around and all of the sudden she stops, makes a worried face, looks at me and says, "I need to go potty." Now this is a problem. See, we're potty training, so that means we're in panties and I reeeally don't want an accident, so I pick her up and run. And if you're at all familiar with the Target we frequent, you know that we're almost at the point farthest from the restroom.

Now would be a good time to cuss. But I don't. I run.

We make it to the customer service counter and I still have a basket with some items and you can't take unpaid merchandise into the restrooms so I ditch the basket at the corner and keep running. My sunglasses are in there and Claire's jacket too, but at this point, I don't care if they're stolen. I just care about getting to the restroom before something bad happens.

At this point, I think we're okay. My arm's dry. That's a good sign, right? We make it inside and into the handicapped stall. I pull down the panties and go to set her down on the seat and that's when things, well, when things go to crap. Or, you know, the other word. The word I said.

I'm a dad, so after a brief survey of the damage I roll with it, trying to clean Claire up as well as I can with the tools at hand (toilet seat covers, wet toilet paper), trying to clean it off the seat (those elaborate toilet paper shields I build before I sit down don't feel so ridiculous anymore), the floor, my shoe (so long, Converse) and I cuss.

I cuss. And in the moment, it fits.

Prison Food

2009-11-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

Here's my one-word review of the AMC remake of The Prisoner:

Look, I knew going into this that it wasn't going to stack up, but, like I did with the US version of The Office or Beck's remake of the Velvet Underground's self-titled debut, I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and accept it on its own merits.

That said, this was teh suck.

In full disclosure, I only watched the first two episodes and sort of watched the second two, so maybe it all of the sudden got to be something I'd dig, but from what I watched, I just didn't get it, "it" being "what the heck was the point of it all."

I could spend days talking about how Jim Caviezel was too wimpy to match the macho sneer of Patrick McGoohan's #6; how having a #2 who was a real person with like, a family and feelings and stuff and not a revolving set of people, each as interchangeable and soulless as the last (it's called subtext, people) was wrong-headed and small-minded; how the sense of feverish paranoia has been surgically removed from the show, replaced by messy jump-cuts, flashbacks, unnecessary interpersonal relationships and half-baked unexplained phenomenon.

I think the most telling thing about the remake is the fact that the AMC site has a map of the Village. This right here tells me that the people don't really "get" what makes the source material engaging. (This isn't to say that the original Village wasn't mapped, just that it was never important to the show that it was.) The Village isn't a real place. It's a paranoid state of mind where your dreams can be turned against you, your memories can't be trusted, your personality can be transferred to a stranger and no matter where you run, you can't escape it. Part of what makes the original feel so weird is that you never have any reference point for how big the Village is, where things fit in relation to each other, etc. It's not a place you can map, whereas The Island on Lost *is* that sort of place, it's in the Myst-ian roots of the show to explore this mysterious place full of deserted stations and strange hatches. Not so for the Village. It just is.

And speaking of Lost, this seems less like a remake of The Prisoner and more like a weak, five-years-too-late rip-off of Lost. Let's do the math: a mysterious place that you can't seem to leave + flashbacks to how Six ended up on the Islanderrr uh the Village + weird phenomena like the holes or the glimmering towers or the anchor and seagulls = yeah, you're doing Lost, not The Prisoner. And the fact that this is a post-Lost remake of The Prisoner, it starts to get a little chicken-eggy all up in here because Lost itself borrows heavily from The Prisoner. I mean, if Ben watching Sawyer and Kate in the bear cages in his room full of TVs doesn't make you think of #2 in the observation room, you're not paying attention. It's sort of like if Akira Kurosawa decided to do a samurai remake of The Magnificent Seven, itself a cowboy remake of Seven Samurai; you know what I mean? Snakes eating tails.

It's a shame, because with the NSA/CIA/Insert Yr Favorite Acronym Here looking over our phone records, intercepting our e-mails, security cameras on ever corner and the TSA making you feel like a criminal every time you walk on an airplane, the world is ripe for a paranoid thriller about the dehumanization of people in an age where you can't even trust your neighbor, or, to get all weird on you, even yourself. That's what The Prisoner is about: being confronted with a world where everybody's watching and manipulating everybody else for some invisible machine whose motives and allegiances aren't at all clear and saying, "You know what? I'm not playing this game and you can't make me. I'm a free man. I will do as I please."

[sigh]

I wanted to like it. Really I did. But the smallness of it got in its own way. I think Matt Fraction summed it up best when he Tweeted: "I made it all of 4 minutes into new PRISONER and thought, […] I could be watching old PRISONER."

Amen to that.

Tunes For Tuesday

2009-11-17T10:40:00.000-08:00

This week's track comes from Lee Fields & the Expressions' great noveau-soul album, My World. RIYL (Recommended If You Like): Al Green, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Darondo, shaking what your momma gave you.

Pretty much kicks. This track's called "Ladies," and it's pretty ballin'. No homo. Represent:

Amazon / iTunes

Stars Are Neon Lights

2009-11-16T11:15:00.000-08:00

Cover for Time & Space's album, We Can Do Whatever We Want, which can be previewed here. Is it Las Vegas, or some strange alien spaceport? Are those lights or stars? When is it? Where is it?

*******

Oh, and I guest-posted on the subject of Mixtapery last week over on Smile & Wave. Go check it out and then download the printable mix sleeve I made:

See you tomorrow.

Back In the Saddle

2009-11-16T10:28:00.000-08:00

Hey. Sorry I've been gone for so long. I missed you. I'm going to try and post more regularly; starting today. Are you stoked? Cuz I am. So keep yr eyes peeled for more posts on all kinds of stuff.

Red + Blue

2009-11-01T05:19:00.005-08:00

November's mix. Purple Fates. I'm not sure what the central premise is here, but it's a pretty … purple mix.

Here's the tracklist:

1. "Anytime's a good time to get gone."
2. "A goodbye and a neon tan."
3. "How did you know that the river don't flow?"
4. "The parallel pavements are peaceful."
5. "I'm not a human, I'm a dove."
6. "You know you set me free."
7. "…"
8. "It's generally known, you got everything at home."
9. "And the truth is, I'm not feeling so good."
10. "We’re dreaming as we move."
11. "Get down, baby, to the funky, funky groove."
12. "Now and again, you can see misfortune, but it won't get you down in the end."
13. "We're living proof of what we can do."
14. "But what they don't realize is there's a plan."
15. "You and me, we break it down like noone else."

Download it here and there are plenty more mixes from across time and blogspace on the Master List.