Sunday, November 25, 2007
I Am the Bringer of Death
This is a great way to kick off my 26th birthday, with eerie omens and the acknowledgement of mortality. The guitarist for the emo/whine-rock band Hawthorne Heights was found dead today.
Normally, this would pass by, and not make any difference; thier music is not exactly my cup of tea. However...
HE WAS 26.
Fuck me if that didn't send a small shiver down my spine.
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This is a great way to kick off my 26th birthday, with eerie omens and the acknowledgement of mortality. The guitarist for the emo/whine-rock band Hawthorne Heights was found dead today.
Normally, this would pass by, and not make any difference; thier music is not exactly my cup of tea. However...
HE WAS 26.
Fuck me if that didn't send a small shiver down my spine.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Saturday Random 10 (but really 20) XXV: American Overeating Day!
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I know I did. Got to spend some time with my cousin in scenic, hard-to-find Bantam, CT. Alright, wrap your head around this one: my cousin lives on a road that goes through three towns. Now, I got on this road in Morris, CT which borders Bantam. The numbers on this road started at 1 in Morris and started going up, until about 300. Then, at the Bantam town line, the numbers START OVER. It was the most confusing thing ever, I was at the correct address, but in the wrong town. I have to drive a mile down the road, to where the numbers started repeating to get to his house. How much sense does this make, exactly?
Anyways, turkey was carved, Super Mario Bros. 3 was played, pie had its own part of the day, it was awesome. Good times were had by all, and the family got a little closer. And the leftovers lasted all of 10 hours. What can I say?
Oh, and before I forget, tomorrow is Evil Brian Day, how are YOU celebratin'?
Here's my birthday eve Random!
1. Andre 3000 - Chronometrophobia
2. Kamikaze Hearts - Secret Handshake
3. Coal Chamber - First
4. Shadows Fall - Another Hero Lost
5. Norma Jean - Liarsenic
6. The White Stripes - I Can't Wait
7. Wilco - Sunken Treasure
8. 2 Pac - Life's So Hard
9. Rush - The Big Money
10. The Donnas - I Don't Care (So There)
11. Aphex Twin - meltphacc 6
12. Eighteen Visions - The Sweetest Memory
13. Nine Inch Nails - The Line Begins To Blur
14. Buena Vista Social Club - Candela
15. Notorious B.I.G. - Playa Hater
16. Serial Experiments Lain OST - Island in Video Cassette
17. Brand New - Handcuffs
18. Rise Against - Life's Less Frightening
19. Hot Hot Heat - Soldier In a Box
20. Better Than A Thousand - Live Today
Not too bad this week. Starting with a bouncy track off Outkast's dismally disappointing Idlewild album, then leading into the best indie/alt. country band in New York State: The Kamikaze Hearts. Some nu-metal wankery followed by thrashoholics Shadows Fall, then some decent christian hardcore and The Goddamn White Stripes. What follows, however, may be the best three-song set my random has ever come up with: Wilco to 2 Pac to Rush....all songs about money in one respect or another. The Donnas come in to sex everything up before Aphex Twin FUCKS everything up...god, I do love my crazy glitchy IDM techno. Eighteen Visions churns up some lame emo-crap...christ, what HAPPENED to them? Before they broke up, they just got completely, totally LAME. Anyways, you got a heaping helping of Trent Reznor's depressing audio dystopia before an awesome, jumpy, cheery sexy Cuban song by one of the greatest collection of musicians ever assembled and then the Big Poppa himself (wow, I managed to get both famous dead rappers on one Random! Nice!) A track off of an anime soundtrack followed by one of the most underappreciated bands working; Brand New. (I realize thier previous album wasn't exactly everyone's cup of tea, but the latest album "God and the Devil Are Raging Inside Me" is immaculate. Or an analogy for a gay threesome; either way works.) The Random ends with some punk, some new wave, and some classic hardcore respectively. Not a bad Random overall, not too much crap, a healthy amount of awesome....yeah, I'd give this one a solid B.
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Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I know I did. Got to spend some time with my cousin in scenic, hard-to-find Bantam, CT. Alright, wrap your head around this one: my cousin lives on a road that goes through three towns. Now, I got on this road in Morris, CT which borders Bantam. The numbers on this road started at 1 in Morris and started going up, until about 300. Then, at the Bantam town line, the numbers START OVER. It was the most confusing thing ever, I was at the correct address, but in the wrong town. I have to drive a mile down the road, to where the numbers started repeating to get to his house. How much sense does this make, exactly?
Anyways, turkey was carved, Super Mario Bros. 3 was played, pie had its own part of the day, it was awesome. Good times were had by all, and the family got a little closer. And the leftovers lasted all of 10 hours. What can I say?
Oh, and before I forget, tomorrow is Evil Brian Day, how are YOU celebratin'?
Here's my birthday eve Random!
1. Andre 3000 - Chronometrophobia
2. Kamikaze Hearts - Secret Handshake
3. Coal Chamber - First
4. Shadows Fall - Another Hero Lost
5. Norma Jean - Liarsenic
6. The White Stripes - I Can't Wait
7. Wilco - Sunken Treasure
8. 2 Pac - Life's So Hard
9. Rush - The Big Money
10. The Donnas - I Don't Care (So There)
11. Aphex Twin - meltphacc 6
12. Eighteen Visions - The Sweetest Memory
13. Nine Inch Nails - The Line Begins To Blur
14. Buena Vista Social Club - Candela
15. Notorious B.I.G. - Playa Hater
16. Serial Experiments Lain OST - Island in Video Cassette
17. Brand New - Handcuffs
18. Rise Against - Life's Less Frightening
19. Hot Hot Heat - Soldier In a Box
20. Better Than A Thousand - Live Today
Not too bad this week. Starting with a bouncy track off Outkast's dismally disappointing Idlewild album, then leading into the best indie/alt. country band in New York State: The Kamikaze Hearts. Some nu-metal wankery followed by thrashoholics Shadows Fall, then some decent christian hardcore and The Goddamn White Stripes. What follows, however, may be the best three-song set my random has ever come up with: Wilco to 2 Pac to Rush....all songs about money in one respect or another. The Donnas come in to sex everything up before Aphex Twin FUCKS everything up...god, I do love my crazy glitchy IDM techno. Eighteen Visions churns up some lame emo-crap...christ, what HAPPENED to them? Before they broke up, they just got completely, totally LAME. Anyways, you got a heaping helping of Trent Reznor's depressing audio dystopia before an awesome, jumpy, cheery sexy Cuban song by one of the greatest collection of musicians ever assembled and then the Big Poppa himself (wow, I managed to get both famous dead rappers on one Random! Nice!) A track off of an anime soundtrack followed by one of the most underappreciated bands working; Brand New. (I realize thier previous album wasn't exactly everyone's cup of tea, but the latest album "God and the Devil Are Raging Inside Me" is immaculate. Or an analogy for a gay threesome; either way works.) The Random ends with some punk, some new wave, and some classic hardcore respectively. Not a bad Random overall, not too much crap, a healthy amount of awesome....yeah, I'd give this one a solid B.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Saturday Random 10 (but really 20) XXIV: No Country For Old Men
I know, I know; I miss a week and now this post is late. Things have been getting kinda crazy lately, what with work getting busier and more stressful for the holidays (for the uninformed, I still work at FedEx Ground) and projects due for school, my free time is getting eaten away and th blog gets pushed down the list of priorities and, for that, I apologize. I did, however, manage to sneak away from my desk long enough to catch a cool flick playing in exactly TWO theaters in the entire state: No Country For Old Men.
NCFOM is the newest thriller from the Coen Brothers, and Jesus H. Monkeypaws does it deliver thrills. Josh Brolin (who decided that HE gets a career again??) plays an out-of-work welder that, on a hunting trip in the Texas desert, stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong, blood and corpses everywhere, one lone survivor lay bleeding in a car crying for agua, a pickup truck full of heroin and, clutched by a dead Mexican under a tree, a satchel full of $2 million. He runs home and hides the money, only to be plagued by his conscience about the survivor of the massacre. He sneaks back to the scene of the crime with a gallon jug of water, only to be discovered by several parties interested in finding thier money. And thus, the chase begins. All manner of Mexican drug dealers chase after that satchel, but the most interesting person is a psycopath with a Prince Valiant haircut and an air gun. The psychopath, then, is being followed by a tired, aging sherriff played by Tommy Lee Jones. Telling you guys any more about the plot, I feel, would just be giving away shocks and surprises, but that's pretty much the jist of it.
If you're looking for a rockin' soundtrack a la O Brother Where Art Thou? or The Big Lebowski, look elsewhere. The whole movie is stark; the only music comes from a mariachi band halfway through. The incredible stretches of silence, however, just ratchet up the suspense.
A lot has been said of the ending, as well it should. There is no formulaic shoot-em-up between good guys and bad guys. Instead, it ends with one of the saddest, most heartbreaking monologues I've ever heard in a film before, and then you get hit with a Sopranos ending; a tracking close-up, then cut to black. Not what an audience expects after 2 hours of pulse-pounding nail-biting suspense but it does bring the overall theme of the film to a close.
All in all, this is a fantastic flick, and I highly recommend it. I'm thinking of going out to see it again to try to see all the things I missed the first time around. Luckily for everyone out there, it's looking at a wider release this weekend due to the (thus far) universal positive reviews and great box office it's getting out of a double-digit number of theaters.
Anyways, enough cock-sucking, let's go to the Random!
1. Foo Fighters - Let It Die
2. Kataklysm - In Shadows and Dust
3. 3 Inches of Blood - Deadly Sinners
4. Moxy Fruvous - Love Set Fire
5. Orgy - Gender
6. Seether - Fuck It
7. Modest Mouse - Cowboy Dan
8. The Clash - Walking the Sidewalk
9. Tenacious D - Explosivo
10. eels - Climbing to the Moon
11. Nine Inch Nails - Beside You In Time
12. Modest Mouse - Bankrupt On Selling
13. Pearl Jam - Light Years
14. Madvillain - Money Fodder
15. Incubus - Leech
16. Aphex Twin - gwety mernans
17. Sikth - Such the Fool
18. The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
19. Sublime - Wrong Way
20. Foo Fighters - February Stars
Wow, TWO doubles, and one of those sets are from the SAME DAMN ALBUM. Lucky for you, iTunes, that Modest Mouse rocks the fucking house, and that last Foo Fighters song is off of the best damn album they've ever released. But still, this is a pretty kickass collection of songs. Kick it off with a track off Foo's newest album (a decent one at that, starts off acoustic then builds and builds over 4 minutes to a crescendo of punk/metal crashing) then get some death metal out of the way, dig down into some Canadian nerd-rockishness then into the Joy Division-aping Orgy. One shitty Seether track later and we're elbows deep in MM's Cowboy Dan, one of the best tracks off Lonesome Crowded West. Then *BAM* The Clash! *BAM* The D! *BAM* The eels! before sinking into the best nonsingle off of NIN's With Teeth. One more hit off the Modest Mouse crackpipe before settling into one of Pearl Jam's "other singles"and segueing into crazy stream-of-consciousness rap. Then there's Incubus. But THEN, a track off of one of my favorite albums ever (and my absolute favorite techno album) featuring Aphex Twin and his crazy glitchy noise. Then we get ready to pack it in with some math-metal, old school punk, a 90's rock radio staple and finishing it all off with a kickass track from Foo Fighter's "Colour and the Shape", arguably the best album they've released thus far over the past 12 years.
Not bad, iTunes. Not bad at all; I give it an A-.
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I know, I know; I miss a week and now this post is late. Things have been getting kinda crazy lately, what with work getting busier and more stressful for the holidays (for the uninformed, I still work at FedEx Ground) and projects due for school, my free time is getting eaten away and th blog gets pushed down the list of priorities and, for that, I apologize. I did, however, manage to sneak away from my desk long enough to catch a cool flick playing in exactly TWO theaters in the entire state: No Country For Old Men.
NCFOM is the newest thriller from the Coen Brothers, and Jesus H. Monkeypaws does it deliver thrills. Josh Brolin (who decided that HE gets a career again??) plays an out-of-work welder that, on a hunting trip in the Texas desert, stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong, blood and corpses everywhere, one lone survivor lay bleeding in a car crying for agua, a pickup truck full of heroin and, clutched by a dead Mexican under a tree, a satchel full of $2 million. He runs home and hides the money, only to be plagued by his conscience about the survivor of the massacre. He sneaks back to the scene of the crime with a gallon jug of water, only to be discovered by several parties interested in finding thier money. And thus, the chase begins. All manner of Mexican drug dealers chase after that satchel, but the most interesting person is a psycopath with a Prince Valiant haircut and an air gun. The psychopath, then, is being followed by a tired, aging sherriff played by Tommy Lee Jones. Telling you guys any more about the plot, I feel, would just be giving away shocks and surprises, but that's pretty much the jist of it.
If you're looking for a rockin' soundtrack a la O Brother Where Art Thou? or The Big Lebowski, look elsewhere. The whole movie is stark; the only music comes from a mariachi band halfway through. The incredible stretches of silence, however, just ratchet up the suspense.
A lot has been said of the ending, as well it should. There is no formulaic shoot-em-up between good guys and bad guys. Instead, it ends with one of the saddest, most heartbreaking monologues I've ever heard in a film before, and then you get hit with a Sopranos ending; a tracking close-up, then cut to black. Not what an audience expects after 2 hours of pulse-pounding nail-biting suspense but it does bring the overall theme of the film to a close.
All in all, this is a fantastic flick, and I highly recommend it. I'm thinking of going out to see it again to try to see all the things I missed the first time around. Luckily for everyone out there, it's looking at a wider release this weekend due to the (thus far) universal positive reviews and great box office it's getting out of a double-digit number of theaters.
Anyways, enough cock-sucking, let's go to the Random!
1. Foo Fighters - Let It Die
2. Kataklysm - In Shadows and Dust
3. 3 Inches of Blood - Deadly Sinners
4. Moxy Fruvous - Love Set Fire
5. Orgy - Gender
6. Seether - Fuck It
7. Modest Mouse - Cowboy Dan
8. The Clash - Walking the Sidewalk
9. Tenacious D - Explosivo
10. eels - Climbing to the Moon
11. Nine Inch Nails - Beside You In Time
12. Modest Mouse - Bankrupt On Selling
13. Pearl Jam - Light Years
14. Madvillain - Money Fodder
15. Incubus - Leech
16. Aphex Twin - gwety mernans
17. Sikth - Such the Fool
18. The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
19. Sublime - Wrong Way
20. Foo Fighters - February Stars
Wow, TWO doubles, and one of those sets are from the SAME DAMN ALBUM. Lucky for you, iTunes, that Modest Mouse rocks the fucking house, and that last Foo Fighters song is off of the best damn album they've ever released. But still, this is a pretty kickass collection of songs. Kick it off with a track off Foo's newest album (a decent one at that, starts off acoustic then builds and builds over 4 minutes to a crescendo of punk/metal crashing) then get some death metal out of the way, dig down into some Canadian nerd-rockishness then into the Joy Division-aping Orgy. One shitty Seether track later and we're elbows deep in MM's Cowboy Dan, one of the best tracks off Lonesome Crowded West. Then *BAM* The Clash! *BAM* The D! *BAM* The eels! before sinking into the best nonsingle off of NIN's With Teeth. One more hit off the Modest Mouse crackpipe before settling into one of Pearl Jam's "other singles"and segueing into crazy stream-of-consciousness rap. Then there's Incubus. But THEN, a track off of one of my favorite albums ever (and my absolute favorite techno album) featuring Aphex Twin and his crazy glitchy noise. Then we get ready to pack it in with some math-metal, old school punk, a 90's rock radio staple and finishing it all off with a kickass track from Foo Fighter's "Colour and the Shape", arguably the best album they've released thus far over the past 12 years.
Not bad, iTunes. Not bad at all; I give it an A-.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Saturday Random 10 (but really 20) XXIII: Congrats Red Sox!!
Gonna bang this one out quick; congratulations to the Boston Red Sox!! Now if they can just keep Lowell and Beckett for a LONG time, we may see Boston making another Series appearance or two before the decade's over.
1. Bad Brains - At the Movies
2. Cake - Sheep Go To Heaven
3. Renegade Android - Breakin' In No Time
4. The Fiery Furnaces - I Lost My Dog
5. Time In Malta - November Rain
6. Hellyeah- Thank You
7. Ol' Dirty Bastard - I Can't Wait
8. Kool Keith - Kick a Dope Verse
9. The Streets - When You Wasn't Famous
10. Static-X - Breathe
11. The Doors - The End
12. Children Of Bodom - In Your Face
13. The Used - Maybe Memories
14. Clarence Carter - Strokin'
15. Noise Therapy - In My World
16. Thievery Corporation - Liberation Front
17. Final Fantasy VII: Original Sound Version - Buried In The Snow
18. Joey Ramone - What A Wonderful World
19. Ibrahim Ferrer - Bruca Manigua
20. David Cross - When It Comes To Jews, Behavior One Might Perceive As Obnoxious And Annoying I Present As Quirky...
This is one badass mix, plain and simple. Not a single weak track in here (well, maybe the nu-metal blandness of Noise Therapy, but that's about it). Plus, any Random with Clarence Carter in it is automatically an A+.
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Gonna bang this one out quick; congratulations to the Boston Red Sox!! Now if they can just keep Lowell and Beckett for a LONG time, we may see Boston making another Series appearance or two before the decade's over.
1. Bad Brains - At the Movies
2. Cake - Sheep Go To Heaven
3. Renegade Android - Breakin' In No Time
4. The Fiery Furnaces - I Lost My Dog
5. Time In Malta - November Rain
6. Hellyeah- Thank You
7. Ol' Dirty Bastard - I Can't Wait
8. Kool Keith - Kick a Dope Verse
9. The Streets - When You Wasn't Famous
10. Static-X - Breathe
11. The Doors - The End
12. Children Of Bodom - In Your Face
13. The Used - Maybe Memories
14. Clarence Carter - Strokin'
15. Noise Therapy - In My World
16. Thievery Corporation - Liberation Front
17. Final Fantasy VII: Original Sound Version - Buried In The Snow
18. Joey Ramone - What A Wonderful World
19. Ibrahim Ferrer - Bruca Manigua
20. David Cross - When It Comes To Jews, Behavior One Might Perceive As Obnoxious And Annoying I Present As Quirky...
This is one badass mix, plain and simple. Not a single weak track in here (well, maybe the nu-metal blandness of Noise Therapy, but that's about it). Plus, any Random with Clarence Carter in it is automatically an A+.
