Oh, I am SO with this…..

Apparently, on the morning of thursday 20th December, the Lakota Indigenous Nation withdrew from all treaties signed with the United States over the past 150 years.  ‘Bout time, if’n ya ask me.  They’ve been getting the shit end of the stick since they first clapped eyes on Europeans, and I hope they succeed.  I also hope someone gets Russell Means a copy of ‘Ecotopia‘.

On The New ‘Beowulf’ Movie

     There’s an interesting discussion taking place here about the new ‘Beowulf’ flick, and whether or not it qualifies as ‘animation’.  Apparently, director Robert Zemeckis did a lot of motion capture, and then had all the actors CGI’ed to look exactly like themselves, which makes no sense whatever to me, except that it meant Zemeckis didn’t actually have to DIRECT anyone after they recorded their lines.

The general consensus over at Cartoon Brew seems to be that what was done on ‘Beowulf’ isn’t animation, and I agree.  It’s not; there’s far too much CGI for it to be “mere” animation.  I think they’ll have to come up with a new category for these things.

Also: I’ve seen the story of ‘Beowulf’, as filmed.  The comicbook adaptation is already being sold in bookstores.  Making a movie of the oldest written story in English (not the oldest written story, and maybe not even the oldest novel) means there’s no pesky copyright, and no pesky screenwriter to drag your name and sex/drug habits into the streets when you make a change to his/her prose.  Those who have read the original know that after what we would see as the denouement, the story keeps going for a while and then just kinda peters out.  This version adds a neat, but somewhat Hollywood twist to the end that will at least make it interesting to watch.

Normally, this would be the point at which I’d wish for a similarly-made film with furries in it, but considering how much of what comes from Hollywood these days is crap, that wish is hereby rescinded.  I would wish now for some independent folks with access to googobs of computing power to whip up something worth looking at, not just because it’s full of ZOMGCGISFX00RZ!!, and not just because it has furries in it, but because it’s actually a GOOD MOVIE.

Aaaah, I can dream, can’t I?

Why I Have Finally Become A Prince Fan

     I have to come clean here:  I really liked Prince before ‘1999′.  I even kinda liked ‘1999′ the first three weeks after its 1982 release.  But then I got sick of hearing it, and it wouldn’t go away.  In Detroit, thanks to incessant spins by The Electrifying Mojo, ‘1999′ became one of the most played records in town.  You couldn’t get away from it.  In fact, it didn’t go away until the 1983 release of ‘Purple Rain’, which STILL hasn’t gone away (and I still cannot stand it).  After such overexposure, I don’t see how I can be blamed for developing an intense dislike for all things Prince, which lasted throughout the eighties.  Apart from some isolated deep LP cuts and b-sides (‘17 Days’, ‘New Position’, ‘Partyman’, and ‘Erotic City’ which is all the more ironic since it’s the b-side of the particularly overplayed ‘Let’s Go Crazy’), I avoided anything the man did because I just couldn’t bear to hear any more.  After 1990’s ‘Graffiti Bridge’, he fell off my radar.  I didn’t know what he was up to, and I couldn’t possibly have cared less.

(Okay, there was the incident in 1990 when, after working for weeks to come up with a track for a house 12″, and I’d finally got something I was proud of, Prince released the ‘Gett Off’ 12″ which sounded EXACTLY like the track I’d recorded a few months earlier, and was shopping around.  I was convinced that either a) he was eavesdropping on the studio I’d been at, or b) he just plain stole my track.  I swore to kill him, then the Gories went on tour, and I forgot about it.)

In 1998, Prince jandered onto my radar again: in an article about the internet’s effect on the record industry (yes, kids, the writing was on the wall even then),  it was noted that Prince’s then new LP ‘Crystal Ball’ had been released for purchase only at his website.  While that’s nothing new now, in 1998 almost no-one had done it.  What made it TRULY amazing is that even with this sole source of distribution, ‘Crystal Ball’ had charted at #64 in Billboard Magazine.  Even I, by this time internationally known as a disliker of all things Prince, had to admit I was impressed.  It was a new day, and Prince understood this.  After having been jerked around by Warner Bros. Records, he took his music directly to the people.  For someone at his level of fame, it doesn’t actually get much cooler.

In recent years, I’ve mellowed on my issues with Prince.  It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything by him, and I still like the first three LPs.  I’m even actively trying to find a UK 12″ of ‘Gotta Stop (Messin’ About)’ with the red-and-black striped cardstock cover, and a peach-vinyl copy of The Black Album.  I’m basically over it, yeah? I still haven’t really paid any attention to his new releases, though.

All of the foregoing is prolegomena to mentioning this article in The Guardian about the release of Prince’s new album (I have to stop using ‘LP’ at this point because as far as I know there won’t be an LP release) ‘Planet Earth’.  It will be released free with the 24 July edition of The Mail On Sunday, in England.

That is totally rad.

Prince, having internalised the new paradigm of the music business, wherein distribution is in the eye of the beholder (see ref. previous post), has made a deal which gets him a lot of listeners, since The Mail On Sunday averages about 2 MILLION copies (this also guarantees him a Double Diamond-selling album from The British version of the RIAA, AAAANNND the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Records Sold On First Day Of Release’.  Now That’s what I call thinkin’.  Buy that man a see-gar).  However, this isn’t setting too well with the British Entertainment Retailers Association,  who are having walruses at the thought that someone could sell a record without them.  Well guys, someone could.  Prince could.  Prince doesn’t need you.  Prince can sell records wherever he wants.

The very fact that these people are angry insures that I, as a fellow recording artist, will purchase a copy of this record.  (If possible, I will try to get a friend in England to get me a copy from The Mail On Sunday, thereby helping Prince do his thing without any interference from another dinosaur who didn’t see the meteor coming.)  This isn’t actually about Prince; it’s more about people who think they can control how the music-buying public buys its music.  The days of control over music distribution channels are OVER.  The control of distribution has shifted to the artist, and while there will be a lot of record industry people who will get crushed under the wheels of change, almost none of them will be musicians.

Now get out and go see a band.

Death Knell for Dinosaurs

Here’s a little ditty from Rolling Stone magazine about major labels crying the blues because they shot themselves in the foot.  That’s about all I can say.  Go see live bands.

Tonight Show clip with Steve Allen, 1953

     Earlier tonight I was checking out this article about the future of television.  I found it interesting that people are more likely to watch the commercials if they can time-shift the program to whenever they want.  That’s fine and all, but what I really want is better shows to watch.

Cartoon Network is decreasing in quality by the month, and the poor Sci-Fi Channel should, at this point, be taken out ’round back of the barn with grandpappy’s #5 shooting iron, and, as they say, sent on.  I used to make time to watch the Sci-Fi Channel.  Nowadays, if it wasn’t for their atrocious original movie series, I wouldn’t watch at all, and I almost never watch THOSE, although I do tune in to see if the latest will be, if not halfway decent, then bad enough to laugh at.

American television is terrible.  There’s no point in owning all of the admittedly cool television gadgets like a TiVO if there’s NOTHING ON WORTH LOOKING AT.

Which leads me to these gem-like clips of the Tonight Show from 1953, with Steve Allen hosting a live halloween party with Jayne Meadows, Kim Novak, Edie Gorme’, Gene Rayburn, and a bunch of other people milling around on the stage.  There’s an impromptu musical number, a bit of song-and-dance, and a show-stopping game of Crazy Grapefruit which was just AWESOME to watch, and which would probably never happen on TV today.

Television sure was interesting to look at in 1953…

Blasphemy.

Plain and simple.

Love, and Football: A True Story

The store is one of my usual stops, on the way home from one of the record shops I frequent. This particular winter evening, the face which greeted me upon entering was not that of the store’s proprietor, but a woman whom I’d never seen before. She didn’t have supermodel looks, but I thought she was quite pretty indeed. She gave me a big smile as I walked in, that made me feel as if everything was right with the Universe.

She asked about driving conditions, and suddenly we were yakking like we’d known each other our whole lives. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman where I felt so at ease, so fast. Even now, months later, it seems as if, for a moment, the proverbial light and angelic choir were beaming down on the two of us, in that little store. For the merest of moments, I dared to hope that this might, maybe, just possibly, be The One. And then — and then –

<sigh> And THEN…

She stood up. I’d asked about a particular brand of wine, and she stood up to get a better look at the bottle I was holding. “Oh, no…” I was staring at the jogging suit jacket she was wearing.

She looked down. “What?”

Are–are you–are you really a Real Madrid fan?” I was looking in horror at the logo and crest emblazoned on the jacket.

She smiled at me again. “Oh yeah, I LOVE ‘em; they’re the only football team I watch.”

“Oh, no” I said again, unzipping my jacket to reveal the embroidered FC Barcelona t-shirt I bought at the Barca superstore adjacent to their stadium in Barcelona.

“Oh, NO…” The shock and dismay was plainly etched on her face as her shoulders fell.

(Now, for the unaware:

There are rivals in football: River Plate vs Boca Juniors in Argentina, Vasco Da Gama vs Flamengo in Brazil. The rivalry between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid is perhaps the biggest in all of European sport. You can read about it here.)

And then, in a fraction of a second, our faces both did the following dance of emotions:

–Hurt and anger: “You’re the Enemy! How DARE you trick me into being nice to you! I can’t even be seen TALKING to you because you’re the ENEMY!”

–Rage at the Universe as we both rolled our eyes heavenward: “WHY dost thou MOCK ME??”

–And then shame that we’re half a world away from both of these teams and their stupid rivalry, and we both started laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

We’ve run into each other a couple of times since then. I personally hold a sort of faint hope that we could be the football version of James Carville and Mary Matalin, but really, I know better. Really: any other team in all of the Spanish La Liga and we would be planning the wedding by now. But no. We laugh about it, but we both know it can never be. Because the moral of this story is that there is Love, and there is Football, and there ain’t no substitute for either.

True story, swear to God.

Loopfags Ruin Everything.

     A couple of weeks ago I was in a record store here in town.  In the back, digging through the dance and disco singles (not all dance records are disco) were a group of guys who were going through them all, needledropping.  This (for the vinyl-deprived) is a process gone through in used vinyl record stores that have turntables for the patrons so they can listen to the record before they buy it.  These guy were needledropping a bunch of stuff, looking for loops, and passing on otherwise good songs because they didn’t hear something they could feed into a sampler and delude themselves that they were doing something creative by making loops.  Under my breath, I christened them ‘Loopfags’.

Anyway, they wrecked the joint.  They left records strewn all over the area, out of the bins, and in some cases, out of their covers, even though there was a plainly-labeled BOX to put records in for those too lazy to put them back where they got them from.  The store owner was so angry he removed the turntable.

The other day, I had opportunity to talk with both that store owner and the manager at another store in town, and the subject of the Loopfags’ recent behavior came up.  It turns out these chowderheads persons are well-known nusiances around town.  Not only are they inconsiderate, they’re annoying.

I bring this up because I got browbeat into going to a club with the promise that there would be Disco.  When I got there, the DJ was one of the Loopfags.  “Alright”, I thought to myself, “Let’s see what you got.”  What I got was:

Two disco records I recognised;

Two other disco records I didn’t recognise;

A whole LOT of 80’s Italo-Disco (again, for the uninitiated: this is a different kind of music: not actually disco, but a kind of proto-techno/house); and the rest was–wait for it–

Loops.

Now, in the proper context, I have absolutely no problem with loops.  Everybody knows I love house and techno, both styles which are basically MADE from loops.  But DISCO is NOT made of loops.  Disco songs are SONGS first.  They might have huge percussion breaks in the middle of them, but they’re still songs.

I don’t really have any kind of rant for this.  All I’m sayin’ is, the next time somebody promotes a ‘Disco’ night, somebody better play some Goddamm Disco.  And I mean heavily orchestrated, Gospel-shoutin’, conga-beatin’ DISCO.

Loops are not Disco.

On Polygamy (and Polyandry, for that matter)

I’ve been following the furor around Warren Jeffs for a while now, seeing as he’s been talked about in the press before (I don’t feel like finding links about him right now; c’mon, what are tabbed browsing and Google FOR, anyway?).  I must say, it hasn’t been until his arrest that they’ve made it clear that what they wanted him on was trafficking in underaged girls, and not on polygamy charges.

Now, I have nothing against the LDS (Mormons), I have nothing against the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints; this is the key distinction here).  My issue comes when you start press-ganging underaged girls into becoming baby factories for your religion.  THAT is WRONG.  THAT is what Warren Jeffs was doing, and why he should and will go to jail.  The issue here is not polygamy, it is statuatory rape, the Mann Act, and all sorts of icky procurement charges, seeing that it is his role as ‘prophet’ of the sect to arrange the marriages, and thereby place said underaged girls into the hands of grown men.
It was the view of the early Mormons that in order to achieve Heavenly Salvation ™, a man had to have at least three wives.  This stricture was dropped in 1860 in order for Utah to become part of the USA.  A certain segment of the congregation believed that this was a copout, and formed the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, which still allows for polygamy, even though the practice has been illegal since the early part of the last century.

Okay, big deal.  If a man wants to have five wives, I say let him.  I also think, however, that a woman should be allowed to have five husbands, if she wants them.  (That’s called ‘Polyandry’, kids).  I see no reason, religious or otherwise, why the girls can’t do as the boys do.  Is it not possible to love more than one person at a time?  Is this not what most of our literature and television drama is based on?  Polygamy, polyandry, and even group marriages are perfectly reasonable living arrangements to me, the human tendency to not share notwithstanding.
The arrest of Warren Jeffs will not be the end of the FLDS; they already have successors getting ready to take his place as ‘prophet’.  No, what will be the end of them is something a little less religious and a lot more typically human: the steadfast refusal to listen to reason where it contradicts one’s beliefs.

Faint Praise, Indeed

I forgot to mention: As we were walking out of ‘Ultraviolet’, the friend I had gone with said “Well, it was better than ‘Aeon Flux‘” (which I didn’t see because I KNEW it wouldn’t be as good as the original), which leads me to wonder: when will the heads start to roll in Hollywood over this kind of shit??  How many more dogpiss-poor remakes, re-treads, and ‘re-imaginings’ are we gonna stay away from before Hollywood gets the message?  “It’s a remake of ‘A Patch Of Blue‘ except she’s the bioweapon daughter of a huge megacorp and he’s a half elf/half vampire NINJA!”

If someone walked into my office saying that, I’d grab the nearest sharp object and replace their groin with it.  I was gonna say ‘lobotomise them’ but anybody who would think that that was a good idea for a movie has probably already had one.

Y’know, Hollywood can blame P2P networks, recordable DVDs, Blackberry units, sunspots and whatever else ALL THEY WANT to explain why no-one’s going to see their movies, but THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT HOLLYWOOD IS LOSING MONEY BECAUSE HOLLYWOOD IS MAKING SHITTY FILMS.  Did we really NEED a remake of ‘The Hills Have Eyes’?  Do we really NEED a remake of ‘The Poseidon Adventure’?  What next, a remake of ‘The Towering Inferno’?  ‘Bad Ronald’?  How ’bout a remake of ‘New York, New York‘ starring Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher?  (and just like that, I have sinned.  By merely typing those words, I know in my heart it will happen, and it will be my fault.  Sorry, everybody.)

Hollywood will continue to churn out terrible remakes and big-budget special-effect showcases with no story.  And, when those movies flop at the box-office, Hollywood will continue to blame YOU.  Sic Semper Tyrannis, kiddies.  Hollywood is in the first stages of its death throes.  Go make some popcorn, and then get a good seat so we can all point and laugh over the next few years.  Good Riddance to bad rubbish.
In the meantime, bop on over to the Internet Archive and have a bang on the future.