February 2012
29 posts
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The Perils of Raising Your Children on CNN
The Clinton American Experience doc will be particularly interesting for those who are wondering if Kenneth Starr has toned down his smarmy, highly inappropriate smirking over the years. He hasn’t- it just appears a bit more belabored due to the softening of his face. As a kid, watching those bunny chompers revealing and hiding themselves between every clause in every response in every press...
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A fascinating and beautiful interview with Robert... →
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Chats With Al: Review of "Spiderman: Turn Off the...
alex: I went through all these different phases while watchin git
opens, cue beginning of U2 score
"oh hey, this isnt bad, basically just a Lamb Lies Down/Tommy ripoff"
then this pretty neat faux-opera choral thing with giant yellow banners and a large black spider goddess hoisted on some beam singing
nice costumes
then, the first dramatic scene
OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS NO NO THIS CANT POSSIBLY BE IT
like springtime for hitler level bad
the writing is just unfathomably awful
also for this performance it was peter parker understudy
far and away the worst broadway actor ive ever seen
kind of a problem since he speaks like 60% of the dialogue
every bone in your body, every instinct in your soul just sort of repulses at it
theres this one musical number, "Bullying by Numbers"
I can't believe humans wrote it
anyway, that level of awfulness continues for about 45 minutes
the like, soul-crushing, I cant believe what im watching level bad
then the shock wears off
and the rest is merely mediocre
once he becomes spiderman at least they have the cool flying around on ropes stuff
the costumes were cool too
there are a lot of WTF stuff
me: wow
i really want to hear the U2 music
alex: NO
its the worst thing ive ever heard
you know how bono does those "yeee-aah" stuff
me: i want to go
alex: in one song he replaces it with like "bam pow zap"
me: of course
oh wonderful
alex: like spiderman sings the chorus and it ends with a bam pow zap bono moment
me: uno
alex: try to download bullying by numbers
me: dos
tres
alex: easily one of the worst songs ive ever heard
me: quatorze (sp)
a lot of elevation/vertigo type shit i hope
alex: oh here was another amazing element
because bono wrote it, they slipped in "references" to U2 throughout
like one scene two teenagers are driving by
and "new years day" is playing on the radio
another scene theyre all at a club, dancing to "Come on, come on"
or whatever that song is called
one scene peter parker is on the phone, and he gets put on hold
the intro to beautiful day is the muzak
its also an incredibly weird mashup of the comic book, movie, and taymors own vision"
so the mary jane character is basically doing her best kirsten dunst impression
also green goblin doing defoe
like, exactly
another hell element is that they try to "update" it for the 21st century
by putting in references to shake weight, facebook, etc.
like some Dreamworks kids movie
me: of course they do
all broadway shows try to be movies nowadays
alex: I mean you can see where all themoney went
its a very lavish production
its just completely misconceived on every level
you cant just do Taymor + Spiderman + u2
the guy who played jameson was great
that was pretty much the only enjoyable part of it
me: so no technical fuckups?
how insane were the special effects
alex: unfortunately no
a lot of flying around on cords and stuff
its fairly impressive
the final battle is in mid-air
my audience seemed to love it
me: so how many stars
alex: from me?
zero
its worse than any movie I saw last year
the scenes before he becomes spiderman are among the worst thing ive ever seen in my life
Al notes that this ticket was subsidized by his place of work:
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Hopefully the criteria for liking things in real life are not the same as the criteria for liking things on Facebook.
“I just speak, you connect the dots”- Lil B
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Himanshu (feat. Danny Brown and Mr....
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KRS One, Prodigy from Mobb Deep and Vince Vaughan all endorse Ron Paul. Dennis Miller endorsed Herman Cain back when you still could.
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If Matt Christopher wrote poems for adults, one of... →
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Joni Mitchell- “Paprika Plains”
This was the song that inspired a wheelchair-ridden Charles Mingus to call her up about collaborating. There’s not much like this song in her entire catalog, and even in the rest of music that I’ve heard. Enjoy it (sorry, it’s too big to stream), and you can get the whole album, the unfairly maligned Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter...
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January 2012
36 posts
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Special (rare) Sunday Post
I just watched the pilot for Luck and I’m all like “whhaaaaaaa??”
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Ian on Wooten
Ian: I'm excited to hear your bass playing
I bet it's cool
you learned everything from me
so probably really really cool
me: did i now
i learned from wooten
Ian: haha well sed
who can argue with wooten?
I've got a great vid, from a longer instructional vid, of wooten playing the head to isn't she lovely
then taking a couple of times through the head soloing
being backed up by another bass player
real distilled, it's the real thing
another about bass soloing
the main thing to take away is that as a bass player, you can't stop grooving
even when you solo
otherwise people will walk away or stop listening
depends on the venue, I guess.
anyway you're just a newbie bass player, maybe you're not into this stuff?
me: that was horrible
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hey come to this! →
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karaoke apprehension
I think the verses of “Wicked Game” make it too difficult.
There are too many complicated melismas in “Fantasy” by Mariah- maybe one should settle for the Tom Tom Club.
Any Warren Zevon song is good.
Any Fleetwood Mac song is good.
You can do “Dancing in the Dark” if all else fails.
Will I remember “Steal My Sunshine” without listening first?...
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I do not like Kreayshawn, which I just figured out is a play on “creation” (!) but I do like that she speaks out against Arby’s. As Pat and I discussed the other night (while working through some post-Popeye’s guilt), Arby’s has absolutely nothing going for it. Nothing anyone can say will change my mind. Arby’s has less going for it than Kreayshawn has going for...
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The love that loves to love
chatpo:
Please read Lester Bangs on Astral Weeks. It moved him to excessive italics, which I have never taken to be a bad thing. Thanks to Alex E for reminding me of all this.
Over the past few years, I have developed a pattern where I have a serious week-long pow-wow with this album once every three months or so. I remember buying Astral Weeks the summer before 8th grade, on the same day I...