Every song's a comeback

On Wenesday Wilco came to town. I neither got drunk nor stoned to see them and it was still a fucking blast. It was crazy, Tweedy proved to be quite the comedian, talking about his narcotics karma, the humming bird dance, oil and getting their shit together. He had apperently fucked up his legs and he did this absolutely hilarious messed up dance in what looked like ski boots. Here is the setlist:

1. Handshake Drugs
2. new song (Impossible Germany)
3. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
4. Muzzle Of Bees
5. A Shot In The Arm
6. At Least That's What You Said
7. Jesus, Etc.
8. Walken
9. Airline To Heaven
10. Forget The Flowers
11. Hummingbird
12. Theologians
13. War On War
14. Kingpin
15. I'm The Man Who Loves You
Encore 1:
16. Misunderstood
17. Wishful Thinking
18. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
Encore 2:
19. Heavy Metal Drummer
20. The Late Greats
21. Monday

Anyway it was crazy. It was good that he didn't play "I'm a wheel" but it was bad that he didn't play "Hell is Chrome" or "How to Fight Loneliness". Still it was well worth the admission, it has to be on my top 5 concerts list.

When all you got is hurt...

For the longest time I was always mixing up John Hurt and William Hurt. Today I decided to do a comparison of the two actors in order to help myself and mankind forever know the difference between the two actors.


William <----> John

John Hurt (British, 66 years old) 91 movies
William Hurt (American, 56 years old) 61 movies

According to Rotten Tomatoes: Worst film
John: Lost Souls
Will: The Proposition (No, not the new John Hurt movie)
Overall average rating of their films according to rotten tomatoes:
John: 61%
Will: 66%

Some of their best, according to me:
John: Alien, 1984, Elephant Man, Watership Down, Midnight Express
Will: History of Violence, Alice, Accidental Tourist, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Children of a Lesser God

Recent Film I've seen:
John: V for Vendetta
Will: Syriana

Total WTF they were in that movie:
John: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Will: Lost in Space

Spiders are filling out tax returns

Never again.

I can no longer drink like a fiend. I will no longer drink more than 3 or 4 drinks in one night, period. I made this decision after Saturday night when I acted the fool. No longer will I be the joke at the bequest of the spirits. I think I remember a fair amount of the night but unfortunately I don't remember enough, apparently I did shitty impressions, yelled about Pavement and quoted Lawrence of Arabia way too much.

In a way I feel like Spiderman. Apparently Brandon got a firework in the ear and I feel that if I wasn't so drunk and being an Idiot I could have saved him. Essentially he is Uncle Ben and I am Peter Parker. I was being an ass hole, but no more, never again. There is great responsibility that comes with great power and now I know that, all too well. No longer will I be the drunk fool on this stage of life.

Gula

Well today we restablished the traditional gluttony binge at Joey's Only. (For those who don't know, Joey's Only Seafood Restaurant engages in the practice of offering all you can eat Fish Dinners on tuesday which certainly verge on fufilling the cardinal sin of gluttony.) We usually have a competition involving who can eat the most peices of fish. There are no rules, except for the ones established by the restaraunt they involve no sharing or taking home fish, none of which effect our competition. There are no rules for the competition (other than you must eat the entire fish and there is no counting of fractions). There is however generally excepted strategies these include:
1. Never eat the french fries, they fill you up way faster and don't count.
2. Never drink too much pop it fucks up the equilibrium in your stomach
3. Alternate on toppings and don't use too much tartar sauce
4. Pace yourself
5. Save the lemon for the end
If you follow these rules you can at least make it to 5 peices, if you are a normal and reasonably fit humanoid.
Today I made it to 7, this was pretty good not a record but then again we haven't done this for a while I need to get my stomach back to capital vice state, then I can finally go hog wild.

When the day is done

Yesterday amounted to almost nothing. Sure I looked for a job for a while but here is all the other things I did.
1. Cheated on an online movie quiz
2. Looked up the definition for Twee Rock
3. Listened to Belle and Sebastian and tried to figure out if in fact they were twee
4. Tried to learn how to play a Belle and Sebastian song on guitar
5. Tried downloading an old Built to Spill album
6. Watched the last half hour of "the Birds," I had given up watching it on Monday I thought it was too morose, but then again it is Hitchcock
7. To cheer me up I decided to watch an Ingmar Bergman film. Fanny and Alexander was on, it was 3 hours and 8 minutes long, It was spectacular.

Factoring with zeroes

So I've been thinking a lot about O'Reilly lately. I thought recently that "My Sweet Sixteen" the show on MTV was the worst thing on T.V., but now I've come to realize, it is in fact the O'Reilly factor that is the worst thing on television. I mean sure "sweet 16" shows kids in the "age of entitlement" but O'Reilly is worse he himself is intentionally distorting reality for his viewers. I think it is detrimental to society, I can see him one day arguing that 2+2=5 and then eventually getting his viewers to believe that and then eventually society as a whole will believe it. I wouldn't hold it past him. He would say we are all entitled to our own beliefs at first when questioned about it and then take it further and further, belittling his guests with manipulative psychological tricks in order to get people to one day agree that 2+2=5.

World Cup Ambivalence!

For a long time I forgot why I hated profesional soccer. With the world cup being back in full swing I remeber why. Soccer is a game where everyone fakes any kind of injury, it is lamentable. Someone will be hit in the leg fall over in seetning pain, like their career has just been ruined, then seconds after a penealty is called they will be running faster than the flash on a crystal jag.

The one redeeming thing about soccer is the fact that it makes me feel better. I always cheer for the African teams, I feel like I am doing my part to help that part of the world by cheering for them. It gives me a sense moral superiority, that I am not some xenophobic chauvanisitc prick, that I can cheer for the greater good. Cheer away, aids, starvation and whatever other mortifying problems they have over there, without actually donating money or really thinking about it.

Kid A (the secret way)

I read somwhere that if you play Radiohead's album Kid A on two seperate sources at 17 seconds apart from each other it will create a very intresting soundscape. Almost like a little album secret. I was sceptical at first but having heard it... holy shit is it cool. I mean certainly there was some shitty moments where it didn't work but most of the time it sounded fucking awesome, vocals followed each other in a weird and intresting way and sounds built on each other creating an entirely new version of the song. I recomend it to anyone.

Wikipedia gem

This is a exert from wikipedia's article on the term Joycean:

"A text is deemed Joycean when it is reminiscent of the writings of James Joyce, particularly Ulysses and whatever portion of Finnegans Wake the person using the word has actually read."

I love that wikipedia, being what it is, can contain sublime humor that a normal encylopedia cannot.

Mission Accomplished

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, victory is all but inevitable in Iraq.

In honor of us turning the corner in Iraq I've posted this comic:

Not too Keane

Using my skills of logic from university...

Premise: Coldplay stole a lot of there musical styling from Radiohead
Premise: Coldplay are not very good crooks, their music sucks
Premise: Keane has often been cited as ripping off Coldplay
Premise: Keane are good crooks
Conclusion: Keane's music sucks

If that is not enough here is a link to there myspace account, to hear said "music."

As if there pop music isn't pretensions enough they wrote a little something about their album in case the music itself fails to convey the message they want it too:
"In making this record we tried to confront all our worst fears, to ruthlessly scrutinize ourselves, our relationships with each other, with other people, and with the world at large, and to make a journey into the darkest places we could find. It made for an incredibly intense atmosphere during the writing and recording of the album, and the resultant music very much reflects that. In the songs we created a kind of sinister fairytale-world-gone-wrong, a feeling of confusion and numbness represented by a dark place under an impenetrable iron sea."
In case you were wondering there album is entitled "Under the Iron Sea." I guess it's somewhere only they know.
I mean people will call Radiohead pretensions but seriously as far as relativity, there relatively unassuming.

Holy Crusade Against Islam, Batman!

So CNN and other news companies have been running this story that Batwoman is a lesbian. Which I think is ok, great, whatever, I mean a superhero with homosexual tendancies what a shocker. The problem is that this is the BIG Story of the week that every media facet is covering, while ignoring other more imporatant stories, like say the intentional murder or Iraqi civilians by US troops. I would rant about this masacre more and compare the two stories in an ironic blog title but honestly I don't know anything really about it, all I seem to know is that that Batwoman likes Xena, Home Depot and sexual realtions with women. Maybe with a few more stories like this I won't need to know anything about Iraq, or maybe the media should out celebrities and famous figures whenever there are problems abroad (I should be in politics).

Cinematic Salvation

So recently I have been seeing some pretty shitty movies in theaters... well not any more I've been saved!.. well I mean I've still been seeing more shitty movies in theaters but I have also been watching Martin Scorcese movies which are fucking awesome. I've seen two as of late and they are:

1. Raging Bull, I actually got it for Christmas but only watched it now. It's an awesome story of violence, love and the destructive power of these emotions when mixed. Both Bob DeNiro and Martin Scorcese were on top of their games, with this one. The basic synopsis is Jake LaMotta prepares for fight, losses control of his emotions, violence ensues, destroys relationships and eventually wins fight, for the entire movie repeat about 5 or 6 times. Then Jake LaMotta gets fat and is alone, the end. Still a very powerfull movie. It follows almost a classical tragic narrative that is very Shakespearian in essence. Throughout the movie I detested, pitied and admired LaMotta the character was really brought to life.

2. The Last Temptation of Christ, it's basically the story of Christ but modified, like the Bible. The main differences are he doesn't rebuild the temple in 3 days, he builds crosses and he gets tempted by the devil at the end to live a normal life as a womanizing rube filled with simple joys, like sex and babies and not thinking. David Bowie plays Pilate and he is sublime. I guess there was a lot of undeserved protesting of this movie, I thought it was a little too preachy. Although still thought provoking Scorcese created a character that was both divine and human, his humanity caused him continual struggle yet his divinity (and his humanity?) finally forced him towards self sacrifice. It was pretty good although, it didn't change my perspective on organized religion. It also seemed like something was missing...