when la becomes miami

crap, it's fucking 95 degrees here. humidity is 24%, which doesn't sound like much, but for california, it's a lot. very sticky these past few days w/ the odd bolt of lightning thrown in.



i took this picture a few minutes ago. this is the clearest it's been since saturday morning.

belligerent ghouls

went to the smiths/morrissey convention at the henry ford in hollywood last night. it was all right. not bad. some cute girls. one girl was wearing a tight skirt + she had the biggest, roundest, hottest ass i've seen in a while. okay, sorry. i just had to write that out.

i've never understood wearing a band tee to a show/convention/whatever of the band you're seeing. i mean, isn't it a given that you're into them? but it was just a sea of smiths/morrissey tees wherever you looked. i was rocking my red circa '70s miles davis funk tee. stuck out like a sore thumb. well, that + the fact that i was, like, one of the only four black guys there. there were some real hipster douches there, though. couple of karen o look-alikes. i didn't actually think people really copied her look. thought that was just something journalists exaggerated. but what else do you expect in h-wood? anyway, when we arrived there, my brother said, "uh oh, we're not dressed cool enough," and i said, "speak for yrself, bitch-- it doesn't get any more goddamn cooler than miles."
"good point."

of course, i wound up hanging w/ these girls who didn't have any cigarettes. so we all took turns bumming off others, then sharing between the three of us (my brother doesn't smoke). one of the girls was all, "you don't toss salads or anything, do you?" and i was like, "yeah, sure," + then she freaked + wouldn't let me drag. so i had to lie + say, "oh, i'm only kidding." not only do i toss salads, but there were some salads i saw last night i'd like to have tossed.

i had eyeball-sex w/ a couple of girls. all of them were hot, but they were w/ their boyfriends. one in particular stood out. i was in the back, watching the cover band, and this dude w/ his girlfriend walks by me. she's holding his hand, walking behind him a little bit. i'm looking at her because she's pretty cute, she meets my gaze, looks away, then looks back at me and eyeballs my ass hard for a few good moments before she was gone. there are casual glances, there are absentminded gazes, there are curious looks, and then there's that look + there was no mistaking it.

so it was cool.

choadfork media

unsurprisingly, i'm no fan of pitchfork media. to put it succinctly, they're wrong. so, yawn, is it any wonder i find their list of 100 greatest videos sadly lacking? now, i could easily be missing it, but i swear that i did not see what is possibly the best music video ever: don fucking henley's boys of summer. if i glossed over it, please let me know. because as i see it, this list has zero credibility w/ out that video. i won't even go into the scores of other videos these sons of whores didn't include, but how can you have a list of the 100 greatest videos w/ out don fucking henley?



ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS?

miles davis quintet, 1964, playing so what

definitely one of the best renditions of this tune. herbie hancock doesn't look a day older than 13. i love it. absolutely in the top 3 greatest bands ever, and the other two feature miles + coltrane and miles + bird.

wait, wait-- here it comes. the inevitable din of the blogosphere:

NOT AS GOOD AS CLAP YR HANDS SAY YEAH, THOUGH, MAN. THOSE GUYS ROKKKKK, LIKE, FERRRREAL. NO SLEEP TILL WILLIAMSBURG!

dep II

dillinger playing sugar coated sour live. it's pretty much a no-brainer why i think these guys are the best band working today.

the dillinger escape plan playing nin's "wish"

fuckin a.

more propagandhi live

this time the boys are rocking back to the motor league + haille sellasse, up your ass. as a former zine distro dude, i gotta say, "fuck off! who cares!? about yr stupid scenes, yr shitty zines + strawmen you build up to burn," is just too goddamn hilarious + spot-on. i love "glenn's" lament about dave mustaine becoming a born-again at the end. mustaine was much cooler when he was a junkie.

propagandhi live

playing a speculative fiction in arizona (or as they would say it, "arizoner"). props to "glenn" + todd for rocking megadeth + dio tees, respectively.

i hope brookers NEVER fixes the gap in her teeth

this is a brooker's newscast. it's actually pretty funny. i usually think the same shit when i watch the news. the myspace, bird flu, and weather bits were epsecially spot-on. the subtext of all news broadcasts is death. we're all going to die. i think a similar current runs through most, if not all, political discourse. we're all going to die if something isn't done about so-and-so, etc. by the way, birth causes cancer.

"WE'RE ON STORMWATCH! AN UPPER-LEVEL LOW WILL SLAM INTO THE WEST COAST TONIGHT AND WE WILL ALL DROWN AND BE HAILED AND LIGHTNINGED TO DEATH. ARE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AT RISK? TONIGHT AT 11:00."

"hey! ya got the time?"

today is gena rowlands' birthday. i have no idea how old she is, though. this image is from a woman under the influence, captured + uploaded by someone at the reverse shot site. you should go there + read an essay on a woman under the influence.

related: reverse shot is one of the few decent film sites out there. they're spot-on in eviscerating that fucking blowhard asshole armond "kill all nihilists" white. and they haven't gulped down the sparkling kool-aid offered by the burgeoning cult ov bujalski. however, they seem to have some kind of bone to pick w/ boston u's ray carney, which i don't get since carney is one of the few who knows his shit, sees through the pablum, and refuses to pull any punches about what's what. not to mention his tireless championing of cassavetes' work. and, you know, that whole tracking-down-and-finding-that-rare-cut-of-shadows thing. i definitely do not agree w/ everything carney says, but so what? (for example: i couldn't disagree w/ him more when it comes to bujalski.) he relishes differences of opinion. what i like about him is that he actually has arguments for why one film is better than another, as opposed to, "well, it's just my taste, blah blah." having said that, though, he doesn't seem interested in fighting against the system and tearing it down. he knows that revolutions just replace one system w/ another + before you know it people will be revolting against what was once the fringe. personally, i think it's great that there are popcorn movies + the last thing in the world i'd want is a cinema full of jim jarmusches. but that doesn't mean that i'm going to go netflix aquamarine or whatever. i'm reasonably certain that movie sucks.

public image ltd. - death disco

public image limited: the most underrated band of the past 30 years? quite possibly. death disco/swan lake is an incredible song. creepy, anguished, heartbroken, angry, etc. and you can dance to it.

this is how you play live

metallica playing master of puppets during the same tour. again, amazing. of particular note is hetfield who has probably never been in finer form. his rhythm + voice are phenomenal. there's a real palpable anger, bordering on rage, during these performances. the death of cliff burton brought out a welter of emotion in the band + they emblazoned it on their collective sleeve. they were a goddamn punishing machine during this tour. "incendiary" doesn't quite cut it.

metallica playing blackened

this is during the damaged justice tour, '89. amazing. real shame what they've become. i saw them in '98 + it was a decent show. they played a lot of old shit, like motorbreath + fight fire w/ fire. they opened w/ breadfan + played puppets in its entirety (as opposed to stopping at the interlude). i've been to a lot of shows + i've seen my fair share of metal + death metal bands play, but goddamn, none of them come close to metallica in the late '80s. i'd say the only thing better, musicianship + performance-wise, would be the jazz bands i've seen.

totally prefer this to the studio version. one, because the energy + ferocity is out of control. two, because you can actually hear newsted's bass.

lesley ann warren = sweet milf

is me + you + everyone we know the worst movie ever made? quite possibly. well, i have yet to see marie antoinette, so the jury is still out on just what the worst piece of shit film ever made is, but i'd still say me + you is pretty close, if not the reigning champ. funny ha ha is up there as well. there's just something about mild-mannered middle-class post-collegiate types that makes me wanna go all klaus kinski and erupt into a volcanic, heaving rage. i wish my problems boiled down to being bored about my plethora of choices in life.

i watched alan rudolph's choose me on saturday night w/ the parents. i'm not sure what i think of it. it was an old favorite of johnny's back in the day when he was a z channel devotee. i have to say, he actually has some semblance of good taste when it comes to films. perchance i can get in there + introduce him to some jarmusch or herzog or dare i say it? cassavetes. i know he liked xan cassavetes' z channel documentary, but that's because he was such a fan of the channel. perhaps i will ease him into things w/ tom noonan's the wife. he likes wallace shawn, so that might be an easy angle to work. he told me he watched eraserhead on z. oh snap, and he named my brother after alex delarge-- aint that somethin'? i have no cool name story like that. anyway, choose me is highly stylized, yet i felt it was more honest than a movie like funny ha ha, which seems like a press release take on human nature, written + directed by someone terrified of offending anyone.

technocratic liberation

Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site -- from the smallest blogger to Google -- network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They'd like Congress to "trust them" to behave.

Without net neutrality, the Internet would start to look like cable TV. A handful of massive companies would control access and distribution of content, deciding what you get to see and how much it costs. Major industries such as health care, finance, retailing and gambling would face huge tariffs for fast, secure Internet use -- all subject to discriminatory and exclusive dealmaking with telephone and cable giants.

Am I a horrible person for kind of wanting this to happen? So the internets will suck (even moreso than it already does)—so what? Then we'll have to, like, go outside or something. I look at this blog, I look at my MySpace page, I look at all the gossip blogs I go to, etc. and I feel tired. T I R E D. For the past ten years I've spent a great deal of my life on the internet and I am beat. I dream of a world w/ no blogs, no MySpace, no metafilter, forums, movie review sites, blah blah blah. Do you know how many times I've just tried to publish this post? I can't even get my one huge gripe about the internet on the internet. Fucking Blogger sucks a big one. It's all so meta/anti-meta/whatever it makes me wanna go all Tyler Durden and start picking fights. But it's hard. The internet is like the TV: it sucks but if it's there, you can't help yrself. Perhaps if it sucks too much I'll be permenantly dissuaded from using it.

Fuck the internet; don't save it.

metallica play "last caress" + "so what" on the MTV Euro awards

Say what you want about Metallica, but you have to give 'em props for saying, "I've even fucked a schoolgirl's twat" live on MTV.

C R E E P I N G D E A T H

cliff motherfucking burton owns you

After 20 goddamn years, Metallica finally plays "Orion" in concert. It's only, like, in the top 3 songs of their fucking career. God, what is up w/ their guitar tone? It's so watered-down. They used to have the best tone back in the day. I hope Rick Rubin is knocking that half-assed shit out of them in the studio.

EDIT: DENIED! Dude, what's up w/ that? I just watched the shit, like, three minutes ago. Man, they are some quick bastards.

Oh well, if it was a vid of them 20 years ago w/ Cliff, then it'd be something to mourn. As it is now, it's just another mediocre performance of a classic fucking tune by contemporary Metallica.

the gathering: sand + mercury

I always thought it'd be near impossible to pull this song off live, but they managed to do it. Fuck. Amazing.

strange machines

The Gathering is one of the best bands of the past 20 years. It's criminal they're not well-known. Here's a video of them playing "Strange Machines" at the Dynamo festival way back in the day. One of the best riffs ever in all of metal is introduced at 02:17 into the clip.

blow hard, suck hard

Here's a big, boring asshole (i.e., blogger) on why he didn't become an even bigger, more boring asshole (i.e., film critic).

Fascinatin', really.

how soon is now?

Call me crazy, but I kind of prefer the edited version of this song. I just like how the choruses are back to back at the end.

Also, doesn't it make you sad to see the footage of Marr showing Morrissey chords on the guitar? Why can't those assholes just admit they were the best things that ever happened to each other and get on w/ it?