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I was sent this stylus top 100 music videos link awhile ago. There are a few good ones in what is an otherwise odd mix of hip hop videos and well regular “pop”. I enjoyed the Kid 606, the Pulp This is Hardcore, and New Order (generally all the 80’s videos are cool). It makes me sad that all the cool channels on TV have completely lost or forsaken what made them cool in the first place. MTV used to be cool in the 90’s, this is not just my nostalgia talking either. I’ve recently found old tapes I had of Liquid Television, The Maxx, and video countdowns (back when they played videos) and I’ve found it all to be quite enjoyable. I don’t know maybe what with computers, the internet, and DVDs we don’t need TV anymore. I guess that’s a fair point but I wonder what teens and pre-teens have to check out these days? Sure many of the cool directors of music videos have gone on to do some great movies but I wonder what will happen to this next MTV generation where Jackass is the best thing going? I just hope that esoteric, creative, and cool stuff does flourish and gain popular audience on the net such that we can eventually have a resurgence of cool stuff with sharp style and good tunes on the airwaves for regular people. Of course that assumes that the internet doesn’t get bogged down by restrictions.

It seems that, despite X3 being sort of a kill ’em off end the franchise total departure from the ensemble approach of the comics, some of the people making comic book movies might “get” them and how to do them justice. Superman Returns had some weird plot elements that for my money are still open and not conclusive. However Singer started the film proper with the original 70’s style cheesy credits and the dramatic John Williams theme that is iconic of Superman. By doing this he ensured a better connection between the previous movies and properly placed Superman Returns as the fifth movie.

A while back I posted about the upcoming Transformers film and just recently heard that it was announced at the San Diego Comic Con that the original voice actor Peter Cullen will be returning to do the voice for Optimus Prime in this movie. Both this and the Superman thing are superficial to be sure but they are important none-the-less and I like that these details are being taken into account. Surely the studio could have opted for some big name star power actor for the voice like they have in so many of these talking animal pictures but to go to the man who is Prime shows an understanding and appropriate reverence for the source material. I just hope that is also reflected in the script.

The Spiderman 3 trailer playing with Superman Returns looks pretty cool! I think we will be getting some Venom, Sandman as the incidental villian, and Harry will become the new Green Goblin (this is the climax which is the best part of any story to be sure). They are bringing the black suit out but it is a different design. Still I think Rami is going to be putting some of his personal touches on this film which looks to be much darker (usually cooler) than the first two.

On a sad note the actor Mako who was the wizard in the Conan films and did the voice for Aku on Samurai Jack and more recently Uncle Iroh in Avatar: The Last Airbender died at the age of 72. I’m not sure how many more episodes of Avatar he had recorded but this will certainly change some element of the story as Iroh was becoming more important in the second season. He had a unique voice in cartoons R.I.P.

The weekend prior to the 4th of July was the first Saturday of the Month is when the local art galleries and shops remain open serving commerce and art (punch) while the local people and tourists (but who really comes to Humboldt Co. to see Eureka) move about and check stuff out; it’s called Art’s Alive! The last evening like this back in June was quite auspicious as my brother and mum had paintings that were featured in one of the local galleries. Since they have both been painting for a few years it was a nice chance for them to get to show their stuff. Then here about 2 weeks ago they ended up with a half page article that included two large full colored images of painting that they had done. This recently local fame coincided with my brother’s band the Never Too Betters wining round 1 of an online battle of the bands competition. Anywho capitalizing on these two events my family decided to open clean up a run down old Victorian house that my Dad bought a few years ago. All part of an eventual plan to transform the downstairs of this house into a full time art gallery featuring many artists they began by featuring some of the paintings of my brother and my mom. I was there for Art’s Alive and along with a friend we got some images of the festivities as the band played to promote their candidacy in the battle of the bands which you can link to and vote for the Never Too Betters Wednesday July 12th between 8:15 AM and 10:00 AM PDT. I don’t know if they will find artistic success or maybe they already have but this counts as a festive evening around these parts so I felt obligated to post about it to spread the word onto the net.

My Brother doing his Jimi Hendrix impression. Ironic since they both usually play/played guitar.

The Band had a pretty sweet set up on the backside of the old Victorian. Behind the drummer Kevin Blevin (I kid you not I’ve know him for like 17 years) you can see a piece of wood that is supporting the delapitating stairs. The guy in green showed up with his gal and was just there to check it out; I’m the guy in the gray looking on like an A and D rep. for some indie label.

The two kids came into the showand my mom showed them a few of her paintings.

Here are a few of my brother’s paintings, I like the 3 part one on the left. My dad made the frame for him custom and it’s pretty cool.

I recently discovered a nice little show on PBS. I liked Jazz music primarily the Bebop and Bossa Nova styles and so I was delighted to find Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis a half hour show each week that usually focuses on 2 musicians that have a common style or instrument. The musicians will talk briefly about their careers, inspirations, etc and then play a few songs (usually one per musician then one with both musicians). It’s a quick show that has some nice music and culture and all that stuff that PBS does really well if you know when to look. At it’s best the show has a sublime quality in viewing that I have not encountered since watching old episodes of Bob Ross. I’m pretty sure the show is syndicated nationally and may only have the 13 episodes but hopefully they will make more. Most PBS stations will probably play it in the evening (it’s on Thursday nights at 8 PM here in Humboldt). If you enjoy this sort of stuff you should check your local listings. Since it’s PBS I don’t think you need cable, to watch it just a TV and some tinfoil.

I* have to pick a friend up at the airport today around 11:30 AM. I made the mistake of drinking too much cinnamon flavored coffee in the late hours and could not get any sleep. Since I’ve been trying to shape up in the past few months I wanted to get up early enough to exercise before leaving to pick up my friend. I knew that this would be a night of some pained sleep as it is just starting to get warm and my body abhors heat. So I opted to put the caffeine (e before I on that one) to good use and decided to exercise around 5:15 this morning. I found VAST to be quite good music as it has chanting and the angry industrial peace of mind that welcomes the day quite well.
As I mentioned above I recently began a scheme of eating and exercise geared towards helping me deal with hot environments (a most inconvenient problem these days). That is to say I wish to lose some fat and so far so good. I’ve noticed that exercising has become a fun thing for me as long as I have plenty of good music to listen to I don’t mind an hour of “jumping about” in the basement and the portability of these new players is quite convenient. Some good music I’ve been listening to has been Boards of Canada, Plaid, Depeche Mode (I liked their new one on the 2nd listen), and some assortment of New Wave and IDM.
In this “jumping about” I suffer one paranoia, not too bad considering how neurotic I am. About a year ago when I was in somewhat “less good” shape I found that after an day of exercise my left testicle had a dull ache. Thinking (hoping that is err . . . Praying at one point (sort of I would not consider myself a religious person but I am no atheist either; I don’t do faith and either position requires it) okay so not praying) that it would pass I payed it no mind. Anywho it went on for a week and after a sleepless night filled with the continued dull ache and fears of testicular torsion, see: episode 9 of The Venture Brothers , or Cancer (all the while being quite ashamed of myself since being a pre-med at one point I should have a greater immunity towards hypochondria but when it’s my boyz . . .) I went to see my doctor. I told her my story in a nutshell (I thought it was funny after a sleepless night kind of like it’s funny again after a sleepless night) and she could not find anything (palpation was not fun. When I get convicted of a thought crime and they take me off to room 101 they will go straight for the nuts) obvious. Her conclusion was that I must have gotten some kind of infection. I got antibiotics and that seemed to solve the problem. So spontaneous infection caused by who knows what ? This is what a neurotic OCD case like me likes; an inexplicable pain that might have been cured by the placebo effect. So cut to a few weeks ago after having just dropped my friend off at the airport (this was the last time he went down to LA to visit friends and explore some MySpace romance, this is his second trip, for the same reasons, who knows maybe he’s found a love connection) I went to get myself a new belt since I had gone down the appropriate amount of weight to require one. I get the new belt and when I get home as I go to take off the little plastic label my clumsy ass allows the stiff new belt to thwap (yeah funny colorful letters shot out like it was Batman) me with the buckle right . . . you guessed it on the left testicle. This was all I needed to enter a near catatonic state for about 15 minutes (not from the pain mind you that wasn’t too bad but from the terror I guess I now have a full blown phobia). Okay so it’s been weeks since this event and no real problem. It’s an occasional thing a few minutes of the dull ache like a friendly reminder. But of what? I like my “jumping around” and I would hate to have to quit that. Maybe I need to get off more often but I find that much like Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull this act depletes me of the testosterone that is vital for me to muster the violence of spirit to exercise. So what then? It is common sense that we fuck to ensure the survival of the species (I’ve always outsourced the survival of the species to other people) I find it an 11 on the irony scale if I need to fuck to ensure the survival of me and my paranoid mind seems a bit stuck on that one (wishful thinking yeah right). Masturbation should handle this I guess but that would still result in this end of violence that I need, to get back into shape. And hell self improvement is masturbation right?

Still this is quite an aporiome (my word of the day which I’m of course using in jest). Perhaps the cure is one of those mates that people are always yammering about? I don’t know last week it was nice out here and I was alone at the family compound so I put on some Bossa Nova, Nicola Conte, and basked in the heavenly sunshine. This was all well and good and it was one of the few days that was truly able to relax in kind of awhile (sort of like how most jokes are a chuckle and very few are the more profound and enjoyable crack up). I could not help but feel that this greatness would be nicer if I had someone to share it with. Now the Existentialist in me knows that “hell is other people” and so I got over this romantic notion right quickly and proceeded to relax but still for a few moments I was hit by the cliche of lonesomeness. Who knows maybe the cure for my physical pain is the inane/innante distraction of other people. Now if my science background tells me anything helpful in this area it would say that the kind of mate that will be enticed by me should like my stink and after just finishing exercising, I can say that this stink most closely matches that of warm relish like the kind on a hotdog at a baseball game or carnivale. Perhaps I will remain alone forever; not self pity callback/segue.
Speaking of masturbation. I was watching Seasame Street which is a sublime program. The letter of the day was “M” so Maya Angelou was talking with Elmo about all sorts of “M” words like mangoes (which can improve sexual performance like in that Seinfeld episode). I think much of my nostalgic feelings were initially inspired during my formative years while watching Seasame Street and Mr Roger’s Neighborhood. The little bits where they would show a person building something or baking a cake set to jazz no doubt are reasons for why I enjoy listening to jazz and baking cakes. I’m still not sure why I like movies so much beyond the childhood joy of spectacle that is still with me.
Speaking of movies I just watched a few and here’s what I thought of them:
Prozac Nation– based on a book by some music journalist I thought I might find some guilty ammusement in this story bu
t it was sort of a one note thing that got boring and concluded too cleanly.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand – how about no stand. If you don’t have a good story that continues the cool stories of the comic rather than just killing people off (lame . . . super-lame) so as to focus on the “stars” then don’t make a movie. I’m not gonna jump on the hate Brett Ratner bandwagon, he’s a competent director and that was not the problem with the movie. The problem was the story. What makes X-men stories cool is that usually due to the large number of characters you get compelling A,B, C stories it’s an ensemble thing and X3 failed to achieve this even though the ground work had been done in the first two movies; I was just disappointed with this one.
Ocean’s Twelve – the cast is there, the director is there (everything looked really good and Soderbergh had some fun with the zoom lens in what was clearly a throw back to films of the 70’s), hell they even got David Holmes back to do the sound but the story well it didn’t even seem to care about being there towards the end. Part of what I enjoyed about the first remake was that tounge in cheek approach to the material I mean there was some self referential comedy and play on the “stars” and that was fine but in OT it takes over the damn movie and not in a clever “meta” way. The story the complexities just sort of unravel there at the end so we can get to where we need to be George Clooney in full smug wins again horray. Hopefully lucky number Ocean’s Thirteen will be better.
Stardust Memories – speaking of clever “meta” this Woody Allen movie plays on that angle way before Adaptation got there I think it was even considered “experimental” to the vulgarians back when it was made in 1980. I enjoyed this one. It had all of the trappings of Allen’s films mainly him being overwhelmed by the world and not being able to decide which actress he wants to bang. However, there was something fun in the way he told the story one that I think was a bit more personal than many of the other Allen flicks. I think this personal element lended a certain truth to the artist’s difficulty cliche and made it worth watching for my money.
I also watched The Man Who Would Be King and it was a bit strange but a good one. And Alexander which is connected to The Man Who Would Be King sort of. Alexander seemed compressed and temporally nonlinear for no good reason. As such I took the film as being more about a boy trying to reconcile his love for his antagonist parents rather than a story about Greater things, so it was gets a “meh” from me.
Looking towards the not too distant future I am pretty stoked about Superman Returns. After seeing the first teaser trailer set to the old John Williams score and featuring Brando’s Jor-El I figured they had this continuation (not redo mind you this is not Batman Begins it is more like Superman 3; I guess you have to pretend that Superman III and IV don’t exist, kind of like you’ll have to do for Alien 4 if they ever manage to Resurrect that franchise). Still my cynical side knows that modern popular flicks need modern appeal to draw in the kids and more recent ads for the film featuring the cool looking visual effects set to modern crappy rock music makes me a bit leary. But the man child that I am holds out hope that it’ll be super-awesome. And this is one man-child that thanks to the purchase of Superman The Animated Series (Season 3 finally with Darkseid and one of the coolest end title cards ever see Apokolips Now! )and Justice League DVDs has two free tickets for the flick. So I’ll go see it for free since not to would be Un-American and I will be convicted of thought crimes not sedition. Still, having two tickets means I could take a friend, possibly make it a date? Fuck that! What sort of cheap bastard takes someone on a date using a coupon and to a freakin’ kids movie? Besides I could use the ticket myself to see the movie a 2nd time for free! Greed now that is the American way . . . forget about truth and justice.

*am kind of tired as I write this and I’m doing so to keep myself awake and because this evening after watching Ben Stein talk to a Senate Comittee about retirement plans on C-Span (I tell you what I think I’ll take Meat Wad’s advice and get myself an IRA so I don’t get burned by the capital gains) I was reminded that my Jerry Doyle post was dated. I don’t usually fill my blog with personal crap but figured it could be somewhat apt and well funny as I have hidden many puns and references in the minutia of the text I expect you reader[s] will have fun trying to find them all! If you do, you win a bonafide “No-Prize” true believer. Now it’s off to the cold swimming pool to cure me of this heat.

So lately I’ve been watching Babylon 5 after a few years I thought I would revisit this mid 90’s sci-fi show and see if I could glean some ideas about how a larger story evolves. Since the show is created and primarily written by one person J. Michael Straczynski it flows pretty well and has a coherence on a reasonably epic scale that I hope is something that Lucas will do when his Star Wars television show starts here soon.

Anywho, the actor that played the chief of Security Michael Garibaldi and one of the few actors that was with the show for all 5 seasons Jerry Doyle always struck me as having a certain kind of authenticity in the way he portrayed the cynical security chief. Other than on Babylon 5, I could not remember seeing him on the tube or in pictures and occasionaly would wonder whatever became of him?

So yesterday I’m flipping through the television box as I am want to do while consuming my high fiber cerel. What do I see but a radio show on television. That’s right good old C-Span was doing some program where they show the behind the scenes of talk radio. On this particular episode who do I see in jeans and a grey t-shirt with headphones on talking into a mic but Jerry Doyle. Apparently, Mr. Garibaldi has been putting that cynicism and disgust for corruption and lies to good use, doing the talk radio thing as a self described “independent” for quite some time. I watched Doyle talk to a few guests and set up his jokes and bumps and it was weird and cool . . . I guess now I know the answer to that question, for what it’s worth

Jerry Beck has recently written an article for Variety where he lists Animation’s 10 Sharpest Turns to date. When doing a list of influence it is usually much less subjective than “best” and I think Beck being a cartoon historian justifies his picks quite well and seems to follow a pretty clearly chronological flow of time, also something that helps make influence a little more objective. I don’t really know enough about cartoons to say that the list is slated too much in any direction but when you are talking about influence you are most certainly not talking about best. I think in this list a big companies like Disney are mentioned because those are usually what hold the greatest sway in pushing a medium into popular success. Still I wonder if the cartoons that influenced and continue to influence todays animators are the “big ones”? Obviously this list is not really about what motivated some kid to start drawing in his basement but rather what allowed animation to gain mainstream popularity among many demographics and not just kids. I think that any other lists that tried to ennumerate which cartoons have had the greatest influence on animators would be as diverse as the animators working today.

So last year I was in the cinema production workshop class at Humboldt State University. Since I have graduate status (maybe someday they’ll reopen the film program so I can be a Master!) I was given the position of being a production manager (scheduler/organizer and general guy with clipboard on set) on the workshop film for that year. It is a satire in the style of The Daily Show taking on Religious Right Wing Corporate Fascism. Written by the class instructor Tracy Boyd the satire entitled: What Would Jesus Buy? also examines different “American” groups that may be affected by the cultural/economic upheaval that is occurring the film.
Aside from my logistical duties my other contributions to this film (God I hope this isn’t the extent of my 15 minutes by proxy) include the Jelly Bellies in Prescott’s office (a subtle reference to Reagan that no one seemed to get(“I’m an artist and no one understands me”)). I also served as one of the camera operators, shooting much of the 16 mm film footage of the old lady and various still life shots of her bric-a-brac.
Anywho I was just posting about this since one of the editors on the project recently told me that he had posted it on the net back in March (hence the nobody tells me anything). So have at it! But I don’t remember what satire has to do with public opinion?

I’d say “big kids” because I do sort of enjoy the stigma that animation still has about not being serious and because the connotation of “adults” is a bit unclear at best. Anywho The Onion AV club recently put out a list of their top 15 animated films for grown ups. I’ve seen about 5 of them and am interested in seeing a few of the others given the descriptions. Personally I find that animation can be a great stylistic choice for many films as it can allow for something beyond the mise-en-scene of typical cinematography. I would think of how Linklater used cartoon images in thought bubbles while some of his characters were waxing philosophical in Waking Life as an example of something that animation allows. I don’t know about telling typically dramatic stories in the form of animation as it seems like that extraordinary element is not used. Of course I don’t really care of melodrama in any form so my distaste for some cartoons that can more easily be placed into such a genre has nothing to do with them being animation. That said I would not feel compelled to watch something just because it is animated. But I digress. One movie I think they missed is The Brave Little Toaster. I saw this when I was a kid but that said I think this one has some adult like themes in terms of what is happening. Also An American Tail seemed a bit more serious in tone at times aswell. Who knows it is possible that this list in seeking to find “adult” animation simply wrote off the mainstream producers of animation such as Disney. That’s cool I guess a good list needs parameters.

I just found this cool site that has many of the old adult swim bumps I have been a fan of the programing block since early 2002, so this has a certain nostalgic appeal to me. Not only can you download and enjoy some of the more interesting little 15 second clips but many of them also include information about the music (often some pretty cool jazzy, trip-hop type stuff). Aside from the great old school ones of the old people swiming in the pool; my favorites in order of how they appear on the site:

• You Can Be Happy
• Strawboard Canister
• Rescue Lion
• No Banking, No Loitering
• Atomic Truck
• The Best Things are Collective
• all of the imges of Japan, Fujiyma at 6:02 is the best
• Shoot the Freak
• Adult Swim Master Control
• Swim & Western Bridge
• [adult swim] on TV

Have a good one.