Cooking by the book

I've had this stuck in my head for going on three days now. Definitely the weirdest lil Jon/Nickelodeon mashup ever.

You can thank/blame my managing editor Andrew for sending me the original link.

Probably only a matter of time before Youtube pulls it, which to be honest, wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Christmas on Mars

It’s about 55 minutes into the Flaming Lips’ holiday epic Christmas on Mars and I’m watching a marching band with vaginas for heads stomp on a baby. Yeah. This may be one of those times where you can’t fake it, and you really do need to be tripping balls to get the full experience. Unlike, say, Pink Floyd’s the Wall, or to a lesser extent, KISS vs. the Phantom. Irregardless [ed. note – for Becca] a viewing of the long-delayed, science fiction carol, Sunday-sober, still makes for a halfway decent piece of backyard cinema.

That’s literal backyard cinema, by the way. Lead singer Wayne Coyne constructed all the sets out of Styrofoam blocks and old septic tanks in the backyard of his Oklahoma City house. And for a movie whose budget looks like it never made it past the Clerks threshold, it works pretty well. Especially given that it’s science fiction, which usually relies on elaborate sets and special effects.

Most of the actors aren’t really actors either. Wayne’s older brother, for instance, plays the doomed Ed Fifteen, who suffers a psychotic episode moments before he’s scheduled to appear as Santa for the station Christmas party and runs out an airlock. The rest of the cast is rounded out by the band and assorted friends and family members, including the lead going to keyboard/everything player Steven Drozd.Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen and that guy who played the Hebrew Hammer also make appearances. They all do their part, and the plot, not that I can do it any justice here, actually isn’t half bad for a lonely outer space tale.

To be honest though, I wish they had bothered to write a decent soundtrack for the movie. Christmas on Mars’ big selling point is that it was made by the Flaming Lips – responsible for bringing songs about fighting robots with karate into the mainstream and arguably one of the best live acts around. I knew the movie was going to be really low budget, but I was at least hoping for some big sweeping space rock ballads. Or at least the inclusion of some of the tracks from Yoshimi, Zaireeka, or At War With the Mystics. I mean, they had over seven years to write something.

Although, if I have a chance I may try to see if it lines up with that other notable, perpetually in-progress, multi-year epic. If I time it just right, I think the movie might synch up with Guns ‘N Roses’ Chinese Democracy.

Audio in progress

For a couple weeks now, Mladen and I have been trying to build our own speakers. Definitely a fun and rewarding process, if you’ve got the tools and the time. But what should have taken us a week, tops, is still nowhere close to wrapping up, mostly because we’ve never built anything like this before and in all honesty, it’s pretty hard to teach yourself to use a skil saw. There’s a high learning curve. Props to Meg’s mom for that, by the way. But they’re going to sound amazing once we get them assembled. Which leads me to an open question: What are the benchmark albums/songs you use to test out a new stereo or music player? I would say mine are Daft Punk’s Homework, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and the Roots’ Game Theory.

Happy Thanksgiving from Alaska

Posting hypocritical videos of Sarah Palin is as easy as feeding turkeys into a meat grinder:

A day of frivilous purchases

In an effort to do my patriotic duty and stimulate the economy, I went out yesterday and bought an X Box 360. And it is good.

Better than good, even. 

I spent over 5 hours yesterday wandering the galactic void with my scrappy band of space marines, hot on the trail of a renegade alien operative. And the best part was I wasn't even doing anything to advance the story. Thanks to sandbox play, I easily killed an hour and a half raiding pirate enclaves in an uncharted star cluster and laying claim to precious ore deposits. Besides, I needed the XP for my next mission anyway, and the credits I earned can go toward upgrading my NPC squadmates with new pulse rifles.

Don't worry, my obsession with Mass Effect won't last that long. Left 4 Dead comes out tomorrow, at which point I will take off my sci-fi nerd space helmet and pick up my zombie apocalypse boom-stick.

l33t.

I'm not dead

I've just been wandering the jungles of the internet in search of good musics.


Behold:

One more last dig, promise.

I know I promised the farewell haiku would be the last Palin associated post I did, but as the Dude would say, "new shit has come to light."



It's nice to see that Republicans don't feel the need to blindly support Palin anymore. I mean, we all knew the woman was dangerously incompetent, but a frightening number of people in this country absolutely loved candidate Palin, and probably still will in 4 years when she makes a run at the White House, and gets depressingly far. It's especially sad for the conservative movement, since it has worked so hard over the past several decades to be taken seriously by academics and media elites. Right now, I think it's fair to say that the faction that adheres to the philosophy of the late William F. Buckley is getting sidelined by the faction that doesn't believe in dinosaurs.