Tonight and the Rest of My Life

So anyway, it was karaoke night, and I'm tremendously drunk; so drunk, I might add, that I was surfing iTunes for something to listen to while I go to sleep, and I came across some startling knowledge of such paramount importance that I thought you all have to know. Yes, both of you have to know:

The new Nina Gordon album comes out on the 8th. Yes!!! After six years, I've finally got the new Nina Gordon album I've been waiting for; Bob Rock production and everything. Oh, sure, you can slag Bob Rock all you want for being just a producer for Metallica and Motley Crue and the like, but you probably didn't read his little credit in the liner notes for Tonight and the Rest of My Life, did you? No, certainly not. I will accept your apology, as I did about seven years ago when I was saying, "No, seriously, Belinda Carlisle's gotta still be hot," and then she posed for Playboy. I was right then, and I'm right now.

In the event that you didn't pick up on my hint to go dig up Nina's cover of "Straight Outta Compton," I'm sorry, because I don't know what to tell you, because I'm not sure that I could find it at this point. However, four tracks off of her new album are up over at her site on Myspace, which I will link to, despite the fact that I believe Myspace is a cancer and reminds me entirely too much of a high school hallway, completely bereft of information; merely full of comments like, "Hey, man, what's up!" "How ya doin', man!" "Didn't see you at the bar last night!" "I'll be at the bar next week!" And so on.

But I digress.

I reckon you should go listen to at least one of the songs over at Nina Gordon's Myspace ... um, space, because my taste in music is impeccable. Well, maybe not so much, as I'm still reeling from that Black 47 incident about fifteen or so years ago. But seriously, this shit's good. Go listen, then go buy it on the 8th. And buy me one, too. And, should you buy me one, and someone else has already bought me one, then give mine to someone in need; preferably someone with poor musical taste, who has been buying CD's by people who won the American Idol competition or some shit like that.


AIM: therbmcc71

Back In Time

All righty, and it's been something like a month since my last post, and I'd desperately like to say that I've been terribly busy with new, important, and fantastically interesting things, but I'm sorry to say that's not the case. I've been doing karaoke on Saturday nights, and pretty much playing videogames, working, and sleeping most of the rest of my time.

That said, here's a rundown of the media I've been checking out for the last month:

• Pulse, the recently-released DVD of a Pink Floyd concert from the Division Bell tour, circa 1995, showed me exactly why it is that Floyd concerts have such a stunningly awesome (one might call it "stuponfucious") light show, and that is because the guys in the band play huge arenas, and they don't move. They don't play to the crowd; they pretty much just play, and the audience is so fucking baked that they don't care. All the audience wants is flying pigs and shit. ... I should clarify that: There is not flying shit, just pigs and various other sundry oddities.
• I powered up my Gamecube for the first time in over a year, because my nephew rented Cars, which really isn't bad, as movie adaptations go. However, since I had the thing plugged in and running, I decided to get back into Metroid: Prime 2, which is the only game that's ever made me so angry that I threw my controller. It's still one of the best games I've ever played. Today, I bought Super Smash Bros. Melee, and it's a very nice fighting game, though the only reason I'm remotely competent at it is the fact that it basically rewards button-mashing, which is the bane of any fighting game fan's existence, as there are no ten-string combos to master, and there is essentially no meaningful health meter. True fighting game fans apparently hate the notion of a "ring out," and that's all you get in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
• I hope my niece grows up to be a badass like Samus.
  
• I've been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion again. Next to Robotech, which I've adored since my childhood, it's easily my favorite Japanese animated series of all time, even though Shinji, the series' protagonist, is a total pansy. I don't know, maybe it's the girls.
• I saw Superman Returns ... twice. Seriously, it's that damn good, and y'all are missing out. It's not quite as good as the second X-Men movie or Batman Begins, but it's certainly a far cry better than Daredevil or the first X-Men movie. It's good. Seriously. Go watch it before it's out of the theaters. I liked it so much, I got the soundtrack. But then again, I've always been a sucker for well-done superhero soundtracks (read: Danny Elfman's Batman score, not that fucked up disc Prince put out).
• I've been anxiously awaiting the Nintendo Wii. Again, I no longer hate the name, but I think that's only because it's fun to say Wii-mote. New Mario, new Zelda, new Metroid... oh, it's gonna be a fun Christmas for me.

In any event, that's probably not all I wanted to get to, but I have to be at work in three and a half hours, so I'm going to take a nap. Next time I take a look at this page, I'm going to take a look at what links I've got on the right side and check to see which ones are dead, and which ones are still worth having. If yours is absent, yet worth having, please leave a comment by the end of July, and I'll consider you for a prestigious link on the right column. Yes, wouldn't it be nice to be linked to from a site that used to get fifty hits a day? Now all I get are people looking for things like Ben Affleck's underwear and pictures of Jenna Von Oy naked. I don't know how that happens.

Oh, wait, yes I do. It's called Google bait. Unfortunately, the people that it reels in are illiterate.


AIM: therbmcc71

Twistin' the Night Away

I'm on a Sam Cooke kick tonight, probably because tomorrow night is karaoke night, though I'm fairly certain there isn't any Sam Cooke to be had in the Saturday Night Music Club catalog. However, tomorrow night at the bowling alley, I will be singing my usual Eric Cartman version of "Come Sail Away," though I'm fairly certain that I'm going to preface this with "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch," as well as a couple of other songs I generally wouldn't sing (read: 1960's soul music).

I'm pissed off, because I put a quarter-inch ding in my laptop screen, which I'm going to see forever. It's like a focal point once you know it's there. I can't help it, but my eyes are just drawn to it, like a reminder of how I managed to fuck up my screen. Oh, sure, I could fix it, but it's not worth the $300 to completely replace the screen. It pisses me off, but I have my limits.

The World Cup is on this week, and ... yeah, I really don't give a shit. Yes, I am American, which means my love affair with soccer (note: not football, futbol, or any other spelling of such) ended when I was about ten years old, at which point videogames effectively took over my life. That America is now officially out of the World Cup tournament isn't much of a shock, nor am I terribly disappointed, given that Brandi Chastain isn't on the team. Yes, my happiest memories of soccer involve the U.S. Women's World Cup team, particularly the part where Brandi Chastain whipped her shirt off (stupid sports bra).

I'm about halfway through season five of X-Files, and it's all part of my plan to watch all of the episodes (nine seasons' worth, plus the movie) and determine precisely where it was that the show jumped the shark, if at all. Now, since I'm not one of those people who gets particularly attached to stars of a show, I think that I could probably evaluate it strictly from a writing and production standpoint, and might possibly come to the conclusion that the show was still good at the end, when David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were no longer on the show. For the time being, though, I'm really quite happy with the series, as I'm about a dozen episodes from watching the movie, which takes place between seasons five and six.

I've spent about the last week being sick. I'm getting better, but for a couple of days, I seriously thought I had mesothelioma or black lung or something along those lines. I've gone from having stuffy sinuses and a dry cough to a wet cough with dry sinuses, and I'm trying to figure out which one is worse. At this point, I'm still not fully convinced that I don't have tuberculosis (or, as I prefer to call it, consumption).

I've been playing Galactic Civilizations II for the last couple of days on my PC, and it's eating my life. It's a very nice game, but I'm not all that happy with the tech-tree, which is more like tech-lines, since there are never multiple requirements for advancing a piece of scientific knowledge. This was one of the things that Civilization 4 got absolutely right (along with most everything else). I mean, I can't really say it's a bad tech system, since everything makes sense, but I find that I haven't been getting into knock-down drag-out brawls with my opponents. I've just been winning the game too quickly, and that's not satisfying. That I've been working my way up from the lowest difficulty setting is probably a good part of this, as I understand the opponents' AI gets to be a real bitch around the Tough difficulty level.

Anyway, it's late, so I'm going to get some sleep and go do karaoke in about eighteen or so hours.


AIM: therbmcc71

Bad

So, no shit, there I was (all stories become ten times better when started with this phrase) at the bowling alley after work. I occasionally go there after work for a beer because it's the quietest bar around, but tonight I was drinking in the bowling alley proper because there was a private party in the bowling alley bar. Yeah, draw your own conclusions about that. But I digress.

Anyway, I'm standing at one of the tables, drinking my beer, smoking my cigarette, and this elderly woman walks up to the right of me and says, "Mind if I look at your balls for a second?" and immediately reaches toward my crotch. Now, the fact escapes me momentarily that this is the most action I've gotten in a long time, so I jump back a good three feet as I process the words I've just heard, attempting not to cough up my Rolling Rock while this processing is going on. It's not an easy task, let me tell you. She goes about fondling the bowling balls near where my crotch was until only seconds prior, while I attempt to hold in all of the comments I'd have said to her if she'd been about half a century younger. Instead, I stand about a yard away, still holding the sort of look of revulsion on my face that Butt-Head would get upon watching a Richard Marx video. Finding no balls that will satisfy her, she moves on.

I just thought I'd share that story with you before I sober up and forget it.


AIM: therbmcc71

Stuck in a Movie You Can't Get Out Of

I will preface this post with an excerpt from Roger Ebert's review of North:

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

In a nutshell, this is my exact opinion of Underworld: Evolution. It is quite possibly the most tremendously awful movie I have ever seen in my life, even worse than Arlington Road, and that's taking into account the fact that Kate Beckinsdale spends the entire movie traipsing around in a tight black leather outfit. I sometimes see masterpieces of cinema and can't think afterwards of any way that the film could have been improved upon, and I felt much the same way with this one, short of perhaps throwing the script out and setting the production team out in the desert to be picked off by vultures.

One of the quotes I found on Rotten Tomatoes (the aggregated score for Underworld: Evolution being a whopping 15%) was from Paul Arendt of the BBC, who said, "So dedicated to its ludicrously convoluted plot that it takes half an hour to explain what the hell is going on." I watched this movie for an hour and forty minutes, and I still don't know what the fuck was going on. Maybe I forgot some huge details from the first movie, and I was tempted for a moment to watch it again, and then I realized that doing so would only cause my brain further injury, quite possibly leading me into my kitchen to find various cutting implements with which I could take my own life.

About an hour into the film, I made various observations, including, but not limited to:

1. If not for the vapid fight sequences, this movie would be five minutes long by now.
2. Derek Jacobi is in this movie. He's one of the great Shakespearean actors (as well as a Knight of the British Empire), and he's been reduced to this.
3. This movie follows absolutely none of the usual rules of werewolves or vampires. More on that in a moment, though, as the tangent I'm about to go on is far more entertaining than this movie.
4. The director really has a thing for cutting people's heads in half.
5. What the hell is the monster from Jeepers Creepers doing in this movie?
   
6. I wonder if it was in the script that Scott Speedman has to rip off his shirt before going into battle as his half-werewolf, half-vampire self. Like the Incredible Hulk, he does nothing about his pants, and they're still quite intact after the fight, but his shirt must be removed before he can begin fighting werewolves, vampires, or Creed fans who think he's Scott Stapp.

Getting back to point number three, it really annoys me when movies can't establish general rules for vampires and/or werewolves (or various other types of monsters) and then follow them. I mean, as much as I dislike Lost Boys, at least they set down the rules. Oh, sure, the Underworld movies have this thing for ultraviolet ammunition that's built to kill vampires (which means 'goodbye humanity' if they ever get their hands on good sunblock), and I'll admit that separating the head from the body is a generally accepted means of killing vampires, but I don't think dumping bullets into werewolves quite cuts it. Seriously, what ever happened to the basic tenet that you had to use silver for werewolves and wooden stakes for vampires?

This led to other questions about basic vampire vulnerabilities:

1. Why do some vampire stories or movies do the whole "vampires hate garlic" thing? Why do they hate garlic? Is it the smell? Does this make Olive Garden a safe place to hang out when you're being pursued by the bloodthirsty undead?
2. And then there's the matter of vampires who can't enter your home unless they're invited in. This was one of those Lost Boys things that didn't seem to go anywhere but Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This begs the question, what qualifies as a home? I can see how owning a house would keep the vampires out, but what if you've got a mortgage, making the house technically the bank's? How about if you're renting an apartment; does there have to be a lease, or can you just go month to month? Better yet, if you've checked into a hotel, can they just bust your door down? Do you have to stay in the room for a few days before you're (in vampire legalese) living there, or do you just have to unpack your bags? Can a vampire just hypmotize you and get you to take three steps out of the room? What about the hotel hallway; is that a general common area, or is the vampire unable to wander the halls unless he, too, has stopped by the front desk and gotten himself a room? Why do vampires always resort to trickery to get people out of their houses, when throwing a molotov cocktail or a tear-gas grenade through a window would do the same thing and probably in less time? No one has ever made any of this clear.
3. If you play up the damnation angle, holy water against vampires makes perfectly good sense. At the same time, though, the only time this has ever been used effectively was when the master thespians Coreys Haim and Feldman loaded up Super-Soakers with the stuff.
4. Is it innate vampiric nature that every vampire has to be a morose motherfucker? I mean, look at Interview with the Vampire: Sure, Lestat's having a pretty good time, but everyone else is like, "Oh, god, it sucks to be a vampire; cursed to walk the night, preying on humanity, blah, blah, blah..." Perhaps their great depression is caused by a lack of Vitamin D, which we all know is magically created by the human body through exposure to sunlight. At the same time, I'm sure vampires could probably take supplements for that.
5. In the Underworld movies, the vampires often take the moral high-ground by not eating people who don't deserve it; rather, they enjoy a nice blood cocktail out of a transfusion bag, due to the fact that apparently vampires run blood banks all over the world. Anyway, they never suck the blood out of even recently-dead people, but there they go with their refrigerated blood-packs. Do the blood-packs have an expiration date? If the blood donor was a heavy drinker of Vitamin D milk, would that help make the vampire more chipper?
6. Has there ever in recorded history (albeit fictitious) been an overweight vampire? Why is it that their hair is always so nicely moussed, even during mortal combat?
7. Scott Speedman is half-vampire, half-werewolf, and at one point has sex with Kate Beckinsdale. Does the werewolf half of him like it doggy-style? ... Oh, you know you made that joke the last time you saw a werewolf movie, just just get down off of your pulpit.
   

Yes, I know I spelled 'hypmotize' incorrectly. This was for comedic effect. Your mileage may vary.

In short, Underworld: Evolution makes Cursed look like The Howling. It makes Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood look like Near Dark. It makes movies like Tango & Cash look good. In the immortal words of Geena Davis, "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

At least there's good news, and it has nothing to do with saving money on car insurance: I bought The Complete U2 through iTunes for a whopping $150, but it's 446 songs, clocking in at over thirty-five hours, including albums, EP's, b-sides, rarities, unreleased stuff, and it's just phenomenal. No, you can't have a copy, because that would entail way more work than you're probably worth, and everyone's already asked, anyway.


AIM: therbmcc71

Workin' for a Livin'

The only thing that came out this week that was remotely worth buying was the Huey Lewis & the News Greatest Hits album. This has left me sitting at home over the course of my two days off this week with little to do other than surf the internet and covet the black MacBook and sneer at its $1500 price tag. I mean, seriously, it's an awful week for a media addict, such as myself.

Def Leppard rolled out an album called Yeah! this week, and it's all cover songs from groups like Blondie, ELO, T. Rex, Sweet, Roxy Music... acts like that. And, if that does it for you, great, but I'm not going anywhere near a Def Leppard album that wasn't produced by Mutt Lange. Furthermore, Yeah! features a cover of "Rock On," which should have been the primary test for Yucca Mountain's ability to contain toxic shit when it was covered by soap opera actor Michael Damian about fifteen or twenty years ago, back when Coreys Haim and Feldman could headline movies that would achieve actual theatrical release.

I still haven't picked up a bunch of albums off of iTunes, such as a John Denver box-set that's inexplicably priced at $9.99, or Bryan Adams' Unplugged album for $5.99. There's a bunch of other stuff, too, of varying levels of quality and general acceptability, all of which I chalk up to the fact that this whole Huey Lewis thing this week has left me with a bizarre urge to pick up a bunch of 80's music, possibly to counter the fact that absolutely nothing worth buying came out on DVD this week (with apologies to World Wrestling Entertainment; I will not be buying Wrestlemania 22).

I have no closer for this post. Sure, I could talk about how the two Enron guys have been convicted, but that's just not any fun. And, I could go on a rampage about how the Justice department raided a Democratic congressman's office, but won't because, according to an Associated Press story, "the FBI said it had videotaped Jefferson last summer taking $100,000 in bribe money and that agents had found $90,000 of that cash stuffed in a freezer in his home."

The FBI has stated that there is apparently no need, as the investigation goes on, to freeze the assets of Congressman Jefferson, as he's already done so for them. Yeah, that's right, if this was the Apollo, they'd be yanking my ass offstage with that big hook for making a joke that bad.


AIM: therbmcc71