Al was asking me about how to embed a vimeo video on the blog the other day. Well, I had not installed a plugin capable of doing so properly. Just now, I did so let’s test it out, right?
Looks like it works! I came across this video a couple months ago. I think its pretty fantastic. Make sure your sound is turned on.
So, I’ve been almost actively thinking about getting into Fairport Convention. Does anyone have any objections? At this exact moment in time, I’m saying its ground-zero: I know nothing, an ignorant babe awash; totally tabula rosa. Have you guys done the research?
This clip I saw recently of Richard Thompson performing from a couple of years ago is my new shit.
Hey!
I’m back!
It’s true, it happened.
Listen, sorry about the long pauses, but The Golden Prize is a labor of love…not grunt homework! I’ve got enough of that as is. And they pay me for it. So while I’ve been busy making my web-presence ever-stronger and trying to cultivate my image as rock critic impressario here in Philthadelphia, you’ll be happy to know that I took some time off this weekend to hit up the Apes & Androids show at Bowery Ballroom. Rad. Rad rad rad. Aaron, being the interweb warrior that he is, had already located someone’s impressive Flickr documentation of the event. This one is my favorite.
Mostly because I’m a narcsisst. That’s right! That’s me and my girfriend, Kimia next to the very Henson-esque ogre being led by that latex dominatrix. [Also of note is the elusive Evin Watson, former roommate of Aaron and I back in our Astoria days, which is only of note because Evin Watson does not exist on the internet. ] Theatrics at the event were provided, as Aaron discovered, by a fringe group called the Foundling Circus Guild. More pics here. As for that silly look on my face…don’t blame me…blame the mushrooms.
To make a long story short, the show was awesome and the band phenomenal. As depressing as the breakup of Call Florence Pow was, its good to know these dudes are back with a vengeance. I think I did a good job promoting them in 215, but just as an addendum, their live act is sick. The harmonies are spot-on and the guitar solos stupefying.
Go see them!
Oh, and opener Reggie Watts blew my wig.
In the spirit of satire so sharp it causes mild bleeding, I wanted to pass on this clip I just got sent from friend Yellow Alex, former guitarist/singer for LES’ formerly great Trick & The Heartstrings. Alex is now out in LA reinventing himself as an R&B auteur, crafting brillitant pop ditties in his mother’s living room. I would encourage you all to drop a dollar and forty nine cents for his new single, “I’m Gonna Make It On My Own” if only to help fund a mad genius with a particularly good voice. The resulting monster might have a stitch of you in him too.
Anyway, I’m not positive that this isn’t as old as the hills…if I’m dropping stale links forgive me. But I hadn’t seen those shredding clips either, and like me and Aaron used to say: Whatevs.
Left out in the cold for months. I just found out about those “shreds” videos yesterday. This isn’t just a case of being late to the party.
The party is over.
According to Technorati, no one has even blogged about StSanders for 40 days. I don’t have to tell you that in Internet years, that is EONS. Its times like this when you need to take a step back and really take stock of things. How did this happen? Did I slip into an Internet coma, oblivious to hilarious happenings on Youtube? I mean, we are 3 months out from the ensuing obligatory YouTube DMCA takedown controversy. Ancient history.
After stumbling across my first “shreds” video yesterday, I asked my friend Corey if he’d seen these things. “Th0se are s0 0ct0ber”, he said to me in mockery of something I probably said to him back when he was playing Johnny-come-lately on another Internet happening. A spoonful of my own acrid medicine.
I won’t bother to explain what the “shreds” videos are because you really just need to watch one. I guess this Santana one is a decent enough place to start your journey:
The only real “shreds” videos are those created by StSanders aka Santeri Ojala, who by my account, is a genius. Although his YouTube page was shut down, many of his videos have resurfaced in accounts of his fans. I suppose you may get a little extra humor mileage if you have spent any considerable time playing guitar, but if you don’t find these hilarious, then you are a sour, sad humorless human being. Let’s have a look at one of my personal faves, the Metallica shreds video where they play their classic hit “One”:
Oh man… that one had me cracking up! You too? Rad.
Another one? Ok sure. Here, Eddie Van Halen takes an epic solo and even manages to incorporate a familiar riff a little more than a minute in:
StSanders’ satire is so razor sharp. Did it cut you? I love it. Seriously, I could embed these for days, but I think I’ll just finish off with a short list of some of them that I particularly liked:
Steve Vai shreds on a triple-neck guitar!
Slash’s extended shirtless shredding sholo
Eric Clapton shreds with the most viewed video (>250,000) of the bunch
The script has been flipped: Paco De Lucia shreds, flamenco steez
Ok there you go, shredmasters! Which is your favorite?
Its weird when things get too synchronous, like the whole universe is out to teach you some vital lesson, some wise tidbit it’s withheld up until this point. References fall out of nowhere, like fish falls, and eventually even the mind most inclined towards reason begins drawing dubious connections. We end up like the narrator in “We Call Upon The Author,” a the stand-out track on Nick Cave’s newish Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Random patterns begin show signs of intent; every bulletin of interest on our daily meanderings becomes fraught with meaning; things get wordy.
“Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!”
About a month ago I was skimming a Brian Bendis nonfiction comic called Fame and Glory while watching a commercial-ridden edit of The Untouchables on AMC. Its a good read, especially if you are into a certain breed of bright-light tell-alls and show-business geekery. It centers on the author’s traveling to Hollywood to sell the movie rights to his hip underground comic, Jinx, and in his quest for validity and big budget cash discovers a shockingly vapid movie industry. Halfway through, Bendis drops that his favorite writer is David Mamet.Weird! I mean “weird” that I happened to be using one of Mamet’s monsters as thunderous atmosphere while comic reading a book that happened to espouse fan love for him, not “weird” that Bendis loves David Mamet and wants us to know it…that totally makes sense.
At that moment superstitious synapses fired, a magical connection formed in my mind, and the momentary experience of witnessing two barely related entities passing happenstance through my particular vantage point shuddered with the dramatic weight of a solar eclipse. Like a reformed smoker who takes that fateful single puff, years of rigorous atheism were rendered invalid, all to the tune of an awesome Morricone soundtrack and overly-witty dialogue delivered by Kevin Costner.
Wikipedia enabled me. My superficial scholarship on the life and works of David Mamet was limited to a single afternoon, culminating in a twenty minute dissertation to my girlfriend over eggs two weeks following. AMC was replaying The Untouchables. I am positive that this work of creative theory was thankfully completely forgotten as immediately as it was hastily delivered, but the spiritual ramifications of the experience lived on, a tedious shadow hanging to the underbelly of my psyche. David Mamet and I were irrevocably linked.
Around this time I also happened to borrow a bootlegged copy of Kill Bill, Vol. 1 from a friend in South Philly who seems to delight in pirating Netflix. This was one of those movies I was energized by when I first saw it, the kind I was totally psyched about at the moment, but had not actually seen since its original theater run. The next week was a frenzied blur of over-analysis and blurry sit-throughs, sometimes only wrenching my attention from the dirty dishes at hand to check out my TV when the (awesome) music swelled. In the world of Tarantino (a director I hate to love) this means something sick is about to happen, so you gotta pay attention.
While I was downloading the OST from my local bit torrent and then biking around the illadelph rocking Meiko Kaji’s “Flower of Carnage,” the rest of my netflix cue suffered. Disc one of Southpark’s sixth season sat in its sleeve for weeks alongside another movie I’d been dying to watch but sort of forgot about, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. My last obsessive study, a review of nearly every Scorcese movie, had led me to it. Frankly, it was a picture I had been embarrassed not to have seen. When I got around to tearing myself away from my tenth viewing of Kill Bill (still only Volume 1 since my love for it had disrupted my Netflix cue even so that Volume 2 could not arrive) and actually watched it, I was totally enamored. Then it hit me: two so-called feminist pictures two decades apart by two directors known for their machismo and mostly violent imagery. There exists a higher power.
Only it doesn’t stop.
Kill Bill, Vol. 1 had radically altered my abused netflix cue. At the top was now Seven Samurai, A Fisftul of Dollars and Kill Bill, Vol. 2. By the time I have absorbed more samurai, more Morricone, and finally got to David Carradine’s beautiful lisp, I was reading my Sunday Times only to find…THIS. When I get to Vol 2 and Esteban Vihiao tells Beatrix Kiddo that it was during a screening of The Postman Always Rings Twice (a film whose ‘82 adaptation was written by guess who) that he decided Bill was “crazy for blondes,” it was if I had just seen the Virgin Mother appear on my burrito.
“What is this great, slavering dog thing that mediocres my every thought? I feel like a vacuum, a complete sucker!”
Listen: I have been spoken to. Things can never be the same; no use denying it. You are listening to the sermon of a religious man. Violent, masculine catharsis and punchy, witty banter–lines as sharp as samurai swords!- are now my moral compass. David Mamet is my prophet.
God has spoken to me. His name is Martin Scorcese.
He’s told me to learn to fucking edit.
Thanks for the warm welcome Aaron! I’m glad I could make it to the party.
Anyway, hello! I am Aaron’s aforementioned “long time friend.” I would like to add that I am an elusive long time friend, being one who, like Aaron, eludes. I say this cause I live in lowdown Philadelphia, a striking contrast to Golden Prize’s warm and comfy homebase on the West Coast. While you motherfuckers enjoy UV, wash and good reef across the country, I live in a grimy city with an exorbitant murder rate, overpriced “artisan” coffee and dirt schwag. All of which sort of lends itself to elusive behavior, a hazy general subterfuge. I’m like Melville’s “white ghost,” the giant squid in Chapter 59 of Moby Dick.
I bring it up cause it’s a killer chapter. I remember it fondly. By my reckoning it was two weeks since Stubb, Flask and Co. encountered the near mythic beast under the watchful and manic gaze of Ahab. They set out, according to my calendar, nearly three months back. That’s not much for the crew of the Pequod, having signed on for three-year contracts, but to me it seems a hefty voyage.
Its not that I am not enjoying it. The book has actually lived up to some pretty monumental expectations: a terrific, careening epic capable of wild turns into both dramatic and comic waves. I’m not sure how much of my reading in 2008 comes parceled with retrofit postmodern apparatuses, but I have to say that there is something extraordinarily contemporary about Melville’s alteration between Old Testament sand and the surprisingly wet 19th century commentary of narrator Ishmael. There’s certainly a mechanism of pastiche at work. When the book swerves from high drama into hysterics, its laugh out loud funny.
Which I wasn’t expecting. My perception of Moby Dick was based on filmic impressions, borrowed from peripheral pop culture, mostly erroneously. All those adaptations seem to have missed out on a pretty substantial chunk of the book, which is the funny stuff. And when the comic and more operatic heights of the story collide, its pretty rewarding: in Chapter 64, when Stubb has a steak cut out of the back of the first kill of the novel, his conversation over dinner to the likewise munching sharks off-deck is amazing. And it only took me three months to get there.
Its funny, but its also detrimental to my diminishing hubris. Seriously? If this book takes me much longer I’m going to lose my mind. Mostly the problem is that it is a novel I can’t read in line at the grocery store. Moby Dick necessitates coffee shop trips and park sojourns devoted wholly to Ahab’s quest. If you don’t pour in at least an hour a session, forget it. And don’t even think of grabbing that one-hitter before diving in. I mean, overlooked hilarity aside, this book was written in the 1840s.
So the narrative junky in me set out to look for some easier to digest material, if just to fortify my diet of Great American classics with some…I hesitate (for once) to drop the usual cliché (“junkfood”). Stephen King has taken enough shit. But that’s what led me to purchasing an eight-dollar paperback of It. How great is it that all the King books have been reprinted in uniform supermarket-style editions, all at eight bucks a pop? They totally satisfy this consumer junkfood impulse one hopes King’s books will quench. Which is, I’ve decided, every bit as erroneous a stereotype as all the overly Shakespearean takes on Melville.
Memories of our team dive into The Stand in 2004 lead me to the King rack, and I wanted a comparable giant (there aren’t that many there.) But I also had fond memories of being terrified as a kid by my father’s gigantic hardcover copy. Rightly so! The graphic cover is so much more visceral than the more atmospheric and literal version on my eight bucker.
I guess its funny to bring up Stephen King in conjunction with Herman Melville because we all just know that Stephen King is supposed to be garbage pop and Melville wrote the best novel ever. And reading the two giant novels at the same time has definitely set me thinking about what silly misconceptions we all suffer based soley on nonsense repeated over and over until it becomes paradigmatic. I suppose the obvious counterpoints for Melville and King are illuminating too. Melville being iconic as the commercially failed artist recognized posthumously and King…well, he’s fucking Stephen King. But I am more interested in where these two books overlap, both being narrative epics with foundations in the picaresque of daily routine (albeit very different ones), both books with obsessions on abstraction. I guess I will have to finish both now, if only to justify further articulating this thought I’ve already decided is right.
What do you say, Aaron? Wanna go through the looking glass again with me? Is this our chance to realize the nostalgia for that year we lived together, racing through a thousand page potboiler between dimes? I think so. I’m like Ishmael on the riggings, and I think I can see the white whale in the distance!
With nearly a month separating me from my last blogging, today it felt like a good time to reach out and say something to the Internet void once again (I am alluding to the fact that almost no one reads this!). I continue to voraciously consume varying forms of media, yet somehow the motivation to ruminate on these in blog form has escaped me. Its been a fairly tumultuous month, this April.
I am happy to say that my long time friend Albert will be joining me in writing about things here. I think he will provide a nice counterpoint to me. He insists that he will get around to writing his first post sometime this weekend. We’ll just see about that though.
Yesterday I finished reading The Cheese Monkeys, a novel by famous book cover designer Chip Kidd. Having finished it, I can identify with the quotes on the back of the book which express an appropriate measure of surprise and pleasure in discovering that Kidd can write snappy dialog nearly as well as he can design nice looking book covers.
Several weeks ago I found myself reading some kind of theory about time travel in Lost where a reference was made to Stephen King’s It. Ever since I began reading Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, I’ve been looking out for another novel to ditch it for so It seemed like the right thing. A few days later, I found out that the aforementioned Al had just begun reading It, which is funny because the only other full Stephen King novel I have ever read was The Stand, which Al and I read concurrently in 2004. FUNNY. Or kind of Lost-ish? Anyway, I have tried a couple times since then to locate a copy for myself with no success. Earlier this week I failed to find it at a local used bookstore, but my consolation was discovering The Cheese Monkeys (KIDD is near KING). It called to me from the shelf with its unconventional design, unusually capacious margins and short length. This was a book I could read and quickly. Turning pages faster gives me a warm sense of accomplishment.
But its not just the small, fat-margined pages that make the pages of this book turn quickly. It is also pretty hilarious. And just so you know, it is primarily about a kid who decides to major in Art at a state college because of the novelty of how badly they would surely bungle the subject. It is also noteworthy that the chapters are organized by semester, classes and critiques, which I think gave it some bonus “curb appeal”. The graphic design prof in the second half of the book is a fountain of violent sarcastic wit, causing me to LOL from time to time.
Do you want to read this book now? You can have it if you want. I’m not really into keeping novels around. You can have American Pastoral too if you want.
Earlier in the week, Noah recommended that I check out Forbidden Zone, a cult film from 1980 directed by Richard Elfman, brother of noted film music composer Danny. Well, I did check it out (thank you bit torrent) and I’m gonna go ahead and recommend it to you, whoever you are.
In the basement of a house in Venice, there is some kind of portal to the Forbidden Zone, which has something to do with the sixth dimension. Down there, King Fausto, played by Hervé Villechaize of Fantasy Island fame rules over countless enslaved women, hangs out with a giant frog-man dressed in a tux, and imprisons pretty much anyone who dares enter the Forbidden Zone. Really though, the less said the better. This is a movie I heartily suggest seeing. Have a taste from the tube:
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Paul Robertson posted his newest animation to the Internet earlier this week. A couple years ago, Robertson blew some minds with his epic Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, a 12 minute black and white pixel art animation opus. Featuring countless insider game references and numerous cameo appearances from ephemeral pop culture icons, Pirate Baby’s hallucinatory world is well worth visiting.
So Robertson is back and he’s raised the stakes with Kings of Power 4 Billion %, another 12 minute animation, this time in full color. The setting has changed, but like Pirate Baby, this is basically an epic battle that one ups itself one scene after another. There isn’t anything else out there I know of that dares to step anywhere near the level of virtuosity in Paul Robertson’s animations. There is astounding detail in every shot and the design of it all is so rich… a feast for the eyes for sure. Oh and it happens to have really great music as well.
It might be on youtube, but you can’t really afford to watch anything less than the 320 meg file hosted on a smattering of websites listed here on Robertson’s blog.
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