Not sure if it’s the band’s best album, but for me personally one of my favorites. RED brings the equal parts progressive Metal (before it existed) and experimental/free Jazz together, which is both stunning and shocking but surprisingly smooth on the ear holes. Course, a whole bucket full of ingredients are sprinkled in — it wouldn’t be King Crimson without that bucket — but to a lesser extent than the Jazz/Metal elements (mainly Electronica; there’s definitely synths on RED, but they’re only adding color, not driving the approach).
- Rolling Stone has the new BRONX record streaming in full. It’s just called “IV”. It’s definitely a blast to listen to, and you’ll want to jump around… but the pure, unadulterated rage of their first few albums isn’t quite there. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on your perspective I suppose. Plus, you’ve gotta look at where they’re coming from: they’re a bit older, some of them probably have kids, etc. But running through it, you do get the feeling that there will not be a track titled “Shitty Future”. Still great to hear a new Bronx record though.
- I’m more than a bit disappointed that Duncan Jones got the Warcraft directing gig and not some other, more prized, pop cultural property [cough... EP SEVEN... cough, cough]. Still though, I am very happy for the guy. He’s got chops, and it’s nice to see a bit more of a subtle filmmaker get a big gig rather than an over the top, every camera trick in the bag, in your face style filmmaker. And who knows, maybe he’ll create a really cool, other-worldly but oddly real adaptation of the world WoW exists in?
- I am firmly on the side of New Avengers over Hickman’s regular Avengers title. A bunch of people spoke of how boring the second issue was because it was a bunch of guys sitting around a table talking. That may be true, but when the “bunch of guys” are the some of the best minds on the planet and they’re discussing how to approach a problem even they can only vaguely begin to comprehend — and it’s written really, really well — that sounds mighty interesting to me.
- Speaking of, I should probably do some comic reviews one of these days.
- Newest Game Of Thrones video blog thingy (from Iceland):
- Alright so the news that JJ Abrams is directing the new Star Wars movie has lit up the Internet. I know it’s redundant, but I’ll be quick about it (I hope). Here’s my take:
JJ Abrams, from a visual standpoint, is a hack. There’s just no two ways around it. He’s the directorial equivalent of a girl (or a guy I suppose) who tries way, way too hard. And any little amount of attractiveness that might exist under all that makeup (lens flares) and spray tan (odd angles w/ no context) and accessories (shaky cam cause shit’s just too intense), ceases to be. I watched his Star Trek once; I couldn’t get through it. It’s honestly that off putting to me what he does with the camera. Which is unfortunate because I’m sure he’s a very capable writer. He has a pretty good knack for high-concepts that end up being as simple or as complex as the viewer wants them to be. But, like that chick at the bar, all that gets buried under these kitschy gimmicks. All that being said, I think he can and probably will make a damn entertaining Star Wars flick. The trick will end up being getting out of his own way. Let things speak for themselves, there’s no need to cover up what’s happening on screen with all that makeup and spray tan. Especially not when it comes to such a legendary property. If the guy can find some way to be a subtle version of himself — I know that’s a bit of an oxymoron — I think Ep. 7 could be really cool. And really, hard not to do better than the prequels.
“People kept saying that the knife fight of the 2016 campaign in America was “unprecedented” but it really wasn’t. They said Rand Paul would never get a second term, but George W Bush did. People called me cynical for saying that Paul would take the second election regardless of the six women who were shot dead while trying to cross to Canada for abortions – before Canada put their own limits on abortion provision. Canada’s the only country Rand Paul ever travels to! He took all the drones out of Southeast Asia and floated every one of them along the US-Mexico border! (Going against his own “policy” of 2012 – what a bloody shock.)
How were people surprised? The only thing Rand Paul ever did that surprised me was using a thermobaric bomb on Islamabad instead of a tactical nuclear device. In some ways, the Paul Doctrine worked: a reunited India, the Afghan Spring, all that. President Paul claimed to have “solved foreign policy by ending foreign policy”.”
- Chris and Matt over at WarRocketAjax have included some of my award categories in this year’s “Gordie Awards”. WarRocketAjax is a pop cultural podcast wherein two really, down to the bone, unequivocally nerdy dudes talk about comics, video games, BBQ, music, movies, TV, net stuff, etc. But mostly comics. The categories they took from me were “Best High Concept”, “Best Rap Verse”, and “Best Last Page (of a comic)”. To which I would have to answer (in order): the entirety of Hickman’s “Manhattan Projects”, Sadistik on “Wild West” (off Kristoff Krane’s “fanfaronade”), and I’ll have to come back to the last page thing.
Here’s that track (and verse):
And while I’m on the subject, Sadistik has a new record coming out soonish. February 19th. Here’s the announcement on his page, along with the track listing and album info/artwork/all that jazz.
- The BAFTA nominations have been announced. Not many surprises here. One flick I was really excited for that didn’t get raving reviews was the crime/screenwriting/Shih Tzu kidnapping comedy “Seven Psychopaths“. It was nominated for “Best British Film”. Glad to see Michael Haneke’s new film getting some attention. Somewhere. I haven’t seen “Amour” but I’m sure it’s probably challenging as are all of his movies. “Original Screenplay” is an interesting category, as I could see almost any one of the guys win. But c’mon, “Zero Dark Thirty” isn’t really an “original” script. I mean, it is in a sense that there wasn’t a fictional account of those events prior to it existing… but it’s a journalistic take on what happened. It’s just telling a real story. And if there’s evidence of that, it’s that the State Department is taking quite an interest in investigating where Boal and Bigelow got their information for the movie.
- Good Lord. More people having more issues over Django. Along with an ultra-conservative co-worker (who’s mad because the movie’s “just about white people getting murdered”) here comes Al Sharpton who’s saying there shouldn’t be figures of the characters in the movies because he says these toys are for kids. Which they clearly aren’t. I mean, any kid would be bored out of his mind with an action figure that vaguely looks like Leo DiCaprio in a Hugh Hefner-esque robe with a cigarette holder dangling out of its mouth. And I’m doubting action figures of characters from Tarentino movies sell all that well. I think they’re probably geared towards hardcore fans who collect things of this nature, and they’re not widely available. “”I don’t see any dolls representing Hitler that came from Tarantino’s (Holocaust movie ‘Inglourious Basterds’)…”, Sharpton says. No, you don’t. But who gives a shit if there was?
When I have kids I’m not going to let them have a fucking Hitler doll from a Tarentino movie, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t allow such a thing to exist.
- The new WTF with Marc Maron Podcastis just spectacular. It is episode 336, in which Maron interviews the infamous filmmaker Todd Solondz. Solondz’s latest film is called Dark Horse. The film is discussed extensively along with Solondz’s career and upbringing, how the former employs the latter. It’s really interesting to hear an extensive interview with the man (even though for a WTF interview it’s a bit short), I don’t know if I’ve heard him speak for more than a few minutes before. Marc Maron is spot on as always, asking just the right questions you’d like to hear the answers to while simultaneously maintaining humor and intelligence and that everyman quality.
- I’m seeing The Hold Steady Saturday and have been looking up videos of them from 2012 this morning. Here’s a good one from “Rock The Garden” (especially cause a lot of these landmarks are a stone’s throw away from where they’re performing):
- Art Under Austerityis a very interesting look at current austerity measures in Spain, as viewed from the scope of where the country has been and is going.
These unexpected points of contact between extremes in a famously polarized country suggest a growing post-ideological unanimity, unprecedented and still unfathomable. The wide social and generational range of those who have come out to march against a Europe ruled by Big Finance, and for a new Constituent Assembly in Spain, reflects the creep of an almost revolutionary radicalism. Even a pair of policemen assured me that 90 percent of the force, as “individuals in society,” would willingly have joined the “Surround Congress” demonstration last September. Until now there have been no counter-demonstrations by right-wing ultras, and not a glimmer of Greece’s party Golden Dawn.
- Last night I made the mistake of beginning to watch the Lance Bangs Pavement documentary “Slow Century”. A mistake because I should have known it would’ve been too fascinating to turn off, no matter how late the hours got. If you’ve got the time, here it is:
- Sage Francis has resurrected the Tumblr Hello There, Racists after an apparent shut down. I think it’s outrageous to say it isn’t fair to publicly chastise these people, knowing full well that Twitter and Facebook are publicly viewed domains (they’re basically the 21st Century “public square”). It also serves to remind us of some very important things, two of which: you’re not invisible on the Internet, and if you want to say outrageous shit you’d better damn well be posting anonymously (then again anyone with half a brain can trace an IP address), and yes… racism definitely still exists. Some of this shit is just disgusting.
- Very interesting article, that very well might go over your head a little (went over mine at least), on the nature of dark energy. Is it static or dynamic in its existence. If it’s dynamic… yeesh, the philosophical implications of such a thing are astronomical; a form of matter whose density and composition and structure changes as it shifts though space time??
While hypothesized dark energy can explain observations of the universe expanding at an accelerating rate, the specific properties of dark energy are still an enigma. Scientists think that dark energy could take one of two forms: a static cosmological constant that is homogenous over time and space, or a dynamical entity whose energy density changes in time and space. By examining data from a variety of experiments, scientists in a new study have developed a model that provides tantalizing hints that dark energy may be dynamic.
The results are still far from conclusive, but the scientists hope that future data might narrow down the models with greater accuracy. They hope that observations by the Planck spacecraft (launched in 2009; first data available in April 2013) and the Euclid spacecraft (launch date is 2019) could help pinpoint the dark energy models that most closely describe our expanding universe.
- Great piece of street art (graffiti, if you prefer that term; I really could care less what it’s called) from GOIN, who I believe works out of the UK:
I think I would need to listen to the album again in its entirety — which is a quite a job — to really say how much I like or dislike like it. So I’m categorizing this under the “upon first listen” thoughts. Which can, and do, change. I’ve been up to date with Neil Young’s modern material since 2003′s “Greendale”, having listened to all his albums since then. And I like most of them. Fork In The Road was probably the weakest of the batch, followed by the ground shaking Le Noise (which, in a strange bit of artistic freedom, featured little to no percussion). So new Neil Young, or old for that matter, is nothing new to me. Hearing him with Crazy Horse in the world of cellphones and private space companies, however, is. Turns out Americana was just rehearsal for the big dance. They’re really bringing out the big (epic, long, operatic, etc) guns for this album. And that world of cell phones and nano-tech is not something Mr. Young wants to be a part of; he sings on the 30 minute opener, “When you hear my song now, you only get 5 percent, you used to get it all… I’m driftin’ back”. The instrumentation is a little nostalgic too, with the band hearkening back to their 70′s days of drawn-out freeform jams, mic’ed 30-watt amps, and that vinyl, analog sound. It feels good on the ears (even if it feels a little strange when just a few years ago Young made an album about retro-fitting his classic car(s) with enough modern tech to free them from gasoline), and it’s sometimes nice to hear the legends crave the old days.
- Then you’ve got Kendrick Lamar’s debut full-length which deserves most of the credit it’s getting.
This is probably the strongest Rap debut we’ve had in some time. I use the term “Rap” deliberately. The production is rock solid, rarely missing the mark. And the slate of producers, besides perhaps Just Blaze, are a little bit off-kilter compared to the sometimes predictable melody makers of 21st Century mainstream Hip-Hop. I always like Pharrell’s beats, and I almost wish he’d do an entire album for a guy like Kendrick. And what of Kendrick himself? He lives up to the hype. Well, most of it. A lot of the these lines are really thought provoking, more than what Top 40 Rap was giving us in the hey-day of materialism Rap, when the illustrious 50 Cent album “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” was the big anticipated album of the moment. Those days are gone, thank God. And Kendrick Lamar, along with a whole slew of new-ish rappers, are taking mainstream Rap into the 21st Century (finally) with equal parts style and substance. It’s nice to see. What this album is not, is “Illmatic”. This is not an “instant classic”. It might become a classic one day, but it’s not instant. In fact, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City might suffer a little bit from Dark Knight syndrome: levels of anticipation so off the charts there’s absolutely no way it can live up them. Which is too bad. This album isn’t breaking down any walls, it’s not shattering the paradigm Rap music exists in as it stands, but it is solid. And it’s the best mainstream Rap has been (w/ a few notable exceptions) in quite some time.
- I’m tuning into the War Rocket Ajax podcast at Comics Alliance right now, mostly because it features an interview with Jonathan Hickman, who I’m a fan of. He might even turn me into an Avengers reader, a feat previously thought impossible. But when I tuned in I was pleased to hear them talking about El-P and Killer Mike, and apparently they talk about hip-hop alot on their podcast (and BBQ). Then they pointed towards a Comic-Con called ColaCon, which blends comics and hip-hop. Fucking awesome. This year Ghostface and Phife (from Tribe Called Quest) are playing. I may have to become a regular listener.
The Nova Convention, three days and nights of readings, panel discussions, film showings and various sorts of performances that sought to grapple with some of the implications of the writing of William S. Burroughs, concluded Saturday night with a program at the Entermedia theater. Actually, the convention was not entirely over; there was a midnight rock concert featuring Robert Fripp, Blondie, and other rock performers. But it was over for Mr. Burroughs and his inner circle, who all went immediately to a private party.
The convention drew an interesting cross-section of people, and one suspected that only Mr. Burroughs could have brought them together. There were more or less conventional poets, novelists, performing artists, composers as diverse as John Cage and Philip Glass, rock musicians, serious students of American literature, street types and others.
All or almost all of them had been touched in some way by Mr. Burroughs’s varied body of work, which includes straight hard-boiled prose fiction, autobiography, nonrepresentational writing using the cut-up technique invented by Brion Gysin, science fiction of a sort, barbed satire, accounts of drug experiences and attitudinal or political pronouncements.
And here’s some audio from the convention as well:
While other American sailors were volunteering their boats and their time along the East Coast to spot U-boats, Hemingway’s concept of operations went further. He would pretend to be fishing, wait until a German submarine came alon side to buy fresh fish and water and then attack the enemy with bazookas, machine guns, and hand grenades. Hemingway would use Basque jai alai players to lob the grenades down the open hatches of the unsuspecting U-boat.
- Back when I was super into writing science fiction shorts, stories like this always fascinated me: Shamoon Virus Targets Energy Sector Infrastructure. As the world becomes more and more digitalized, it opens itself up closer and closer to ruin. Yes, I realize I’m breaking no new ground with that statement.
- Enlightening interview with Gore Vidal in 2005, which has never before been translated into English. Like most writers — good writers — the guy couldn’t get enough of himself. But I can respect that because he was one of smartest men on the planet, and never spoke about anything he wasn’t ahead of the curve on. Example: this was his response to, “what do you think of religion today in America?”:
It’s the work of the devil. Maybe there is no good God. But there is definitely a devil, and his predominant passion is the religion of those Protestant fundamentalists. I believe my country is beginning to resemble a theocracy. Using television, the evangelists raise appalling amounts of money which they then invest in the election of mentally disabled obscurantists.
Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant. They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! But we live in an abnormal country, governed by experts in deceptive advertising.
- First up, a gorgeously stunning picture of the Perseids Meteor Shower in beautiful high definition. This was taken on the Snowy Range of Wyoming, a composite of 20-some pictures into one. Awesome:
- Wait, there’s a chance that Will.I.Am will be quitting music to focus on computer coding?? A very plausible chance? Right the F on! Now all we need is for one more member of Black Eyed Peas to do something else with their life and maybe we’ll never hear from them again.
- New teaser trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s next movie, “The Master”. It’s a bizarre looking film that looks to be chronicling the rise of L. Ron Hubbard and his church of Scientology in America. A fictional version of that, of course. But all I’ve got to say about this footage is HOLY SHIT JOAQUIN PHOENIX. Why did you ever stop acting and do that weird modern-art I’m-a-rapper thingy?? You’re too good.
Among the good economic institutions that motivate people to become productive are the protection of their private property rights, predictable enforcement of their contracts, opportunities to invest and retain control of their money, control of inflation, and open exchange of currency. For instance, people are motivated to work hard if they have opportunities to invest their earnings profitably, but not if they have few such opportunities or if their earnings or profits are likely to be confiscated.
- THOUGHT OF THE WEEK: If we look back at history, we see that previous versions of ourselves were ignorant on a whole plethora of topics. Nobody would dispute that we were wrong about all sorts of shit in the Middle Ages. So, why then does every single generation, decade, people think it knows everything? Every single one thinks it’s got it all figured out, from Science to Economics. Is it not extremely fucking naive to think we know anything?
More important than any of these preceding aspects, though, is the fact that Pynchon is a politically engaged, ethical writer. Gravity’s Rainbow is not just a dense, postmodern sprawl, but instead makes one of its central observations on the fact that the evil of mankind, parallel to nature, “does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation”, a spatio-temporal transposition to a new setting, persisting Beyond the Zero of any Pavlovian deconditioning, and always collecting around centres of power, embodied by the novel’s final, America-bound, transatlantic V-2/ICBM. Through this impossible moment, Pynchon highlights that behind twentieth-century America’s technological and economic supremacy lies the dark negotiations of Operation Paperclip and a re-embodiment of the right-wing politics supposedly vanquished in the Second World War.
