Mötley Mëdia

Why I'm reallly just a poser

2009-04-07T04:27:00.000-07:00

The spikes, the patches, the headband--they're all just an act. I'm actually a wuss.

Created for a class at the University of Oregon. This is the kind of stuff I get to do as an ad major.

Why I'm not furious about this fast approaching film

2009-04-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

A lot of people don't expect me to be a huge fan of the Fast and Furious series, but I'm proud to report that I'm a total junkie for 'em. When finally saw the onscreen chemistry between Vin Diesel and Paul Walker in the very first one, I was blown away. The cynic in me was ready to break down the plot as nonsense (let's face it, most action movies lack a good storyline), but honestly I found that the story took the front seat, as it were. The rich characters vibrated with such intensity that they seemed every bit as fast and as furious as their mechanical counterparts.

Finally, eight years after the original, we fans are going to get a tour de force in the form of the return of the original cast. The new trailer looks fantastic--lots of thrills but clearly a return to the tight writing and well-structured plot that made the first film an instant classic.

I'm pumped with all cylinders firing. Who knows, I might even shave my head for the midnight premiere to make my Dominic Toretto costume complete.

Oh, and don't forget the new trailer, which features Soulja Boy's hit single, "Crank Dat." Again, the cynic in me wanted to find fault with this. But for some reason I think it totally fits. I just can't be pessimistic about this!

Why Friday the 13th is shit

2009-03-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

I watched Friday the 13th, excited to see the iconic hockey mask on killer Jason Voorhees. Turns out that Jason isn't the killer in the first one. It's his mother. Yeah, that's right. Jason isn't the killer in the first Friday the 13th.

So I decided to watch the second one. Jason is indeed the killer in the second one, but guess what? He doesn't wear a hockey mask. He wears a sheet over his head.

What the fuck? The hockey mask doesn't show up until the third Friday the 13th movie? How the fuck is it so famous? Everyone knows the hockey mask. I can't believe that it took two entire movies before someone raised their hand and suggested something scarier than an aging woman or a pillowcase with an eyehole.

You'd never get away with that shit nowadays. A movie made nowadays has to have an icon, a takeaway. Every movie has to have it. Our attention spans are so poor that we have to have some image in mind when we go see a film or we have no hope of ever enjoying it.

They were smart for the re-make of the original Friday the 13th. No longer are camp counselors being threatened by a 60 year old insane woman. They got smart and re-wrote it with Jason as the villain.

Why I'm still cool: more attempts at bass guitar

2009-03-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

This time I put together clips of some more technical songs that I've been working on. Up on the chopping block are "Space Truckin'" by Deep Purple and "Flight of Icarus" by Iron Maiden. I don't play Maiden the way Steve Harris does. I can't. He's a god.

I also noticed while watching this video that I seem to be developing the bad habit of sticking my pinky out on my picking hand, which I know you aren't supposed to do. Fuck. Guess I have ergonomics to add to the list of things to work on.

Why Wolves in the Throne Room is the best live show I've ever been to

2009-03-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know what a full stack is, let me insert a brief prologue here before I jump into this concert review. The full stack is the definition of heavy metal. The definition of loud. A full stack consists of two amplifier cabinets and an amp head. Marshall, pioneers of such a set-up, are still closely associated with the full stack. 1980s NWOBM band Raven even wrote a song called "The Ballad of Marshall Stack". When you see how sexy a Marshall full stack looks, you definitely understand why someone would write a song in tribute to it:

Oh baby.

When I saw the members of Wolves in the Throne Room carrying three of these full stacks out onto the stage of the tiny Oak Street Speakeasy here in Eugene, Oregon, I felt my heart rate increase a bit. When they turned out all the lights and started lighting candles onstage, I smiled. When they started playing, my heart stopped.

For the first time in my life, I felt as though sound was a physical presence. The intensity, the reverb, the volume, they all culminated in a sort of sonic gel that just enveloped me in a thick paste of Black Metal.

There was so much sound that I heard new songs within the competing harmonic frequencies and the faster I thrashed my head the more I created my own rhythm of sound pulsing into my ears and out again--moving the gel of sound in and out of my brain.

I realized about 20 minutes in that I had curled my hands into claws and was reaching them to the sky, as if I were trying to grasp something in the heavens. I stared at my own hands, shocked that they seemed to be moving on their own. And when I looked around I saw that I was not the only one who was clawing at the air. We were a seething mass of destructive people, our claw hands elevated in some sort of demonic rapture.

Everything is right with the world now. I cannot be mad at any other human. Wolves in the Throne Room calls their music "Cleansing Black Metal." I see why. We are all one within the gel of sound and our anger collected and was cleansed into the sky, never to be heard from again.

Why I haven't been on here in a while...

2009-03-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

1. Finals. Fuck.

2. I'm kicking off a new blog in addition to this one in order to document my new business idea. A lot of people have been telling me that I should get serious about my hobby of drawing on shoes and clothing, so check out the progress I'm making on that venture:

artkicks.blogspot.com

Why Joaquin isn't so original

2009-02-27T16:45:00.000-08:00

So guess what? As I've been researching the recent Joaquin Phoenix appearance on Letterman, and it turns out that appearing on Letterman with a persona is old news. I watched a lot of YouTube over the last week, and I basically concluded that Letterman probably knew that Phoenix was acting. I doubt Phoenix told him beforehand, but as soon as Joaquin stepped out on that set, Letterman probably figured out that Phoenix was pulling a prank or promoting something.

Letterman has seen this kind of stunt before. The poor guy has had so many insane interviews over the last few decades that I'm sure he's become very familiar with bizarre individuals and has gotten very good at handling them.

There are two Letterman interviews that are particularly hilarious. Both involved the guest being awkward and anti-social. Both were also later revealed to be hoaxes.

One was comedian Andy Kaufman's appearance in 1980. Kaufman was famous for his subtle comedy that bordered on performance art--pulling elaborate stunts and never indicating that he was indeed acting. Kaufman's humor relied on the audience laughing due to discomfort. Or laughing at the people who didn't get the joke--laughing at people who weren't laughing at Kaufman.

Kaufman's schtick should look familiar to those who saw the Phoenix interview. I bet that Phoenix studied this tape over and over.

Taking a cue from Kaufman, actor Crispin Glover appeared on Letterman in 1987 to promote the upcoming film River's Edge. Glover appeared in character, even wearing the same costume that he wore in the film, right down to the platform shoes. A lot of people thought Glover was on LSD, but he later revealed (grudgingly) that he was acting.

I'm looking forward to Phoenix's big reveal. But at the same time, I kind of hope that Phoenix pulls a Kaufman and never fully admits to engineering the awkwardness. The world needs someone like Kaufman who can shake up perceptions and keep people on their toes.

Why I'm cool: attempts at bass guitar

2009-02-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

Plug time. Ready?

I bought an iStudioLink instrument cable, and I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised. The sound quality is really good considering that it runs directly from the instrument to the computer. Coupled with Garageband for Mac, I can basically simulate any effect pedal that I want, including distortion, phaser, and overdrive.

Now that I can balance levels in Garageband, I can finally record myself playing bass. As an added bonus, I can sync the mixed Garageband audio with video of me playing to prove that I can indeed play an instrument (poorly).

Here's my attempt at "Bloodstains" by Agent Orange and "Switch 625" by Def Leppard.

Please be gentle.

Why SNES makes me angry

2009-02-18T00:33:00.000-08:00

Playing old school platformers raises my blood pressure. Here's a short video I made of my many SNES deaths.

God dammit.

/w\

Why Joaquin Phoenix is a genius

2009-02-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

Before I begin, let us keep two facts in mind:

1) Joaquin Phoenix is an actor (and a method actor at that)
2) Smart people no longer engage in traditional promotion and have recently taken advantage of the viral spirit of a connected, digital world.

Joaquin Phoenix has been a respected actor for as long as I can remember. His roles in Gladiator and Walk the Line proved that he was versatile and capable of pushing himself outside of his comfort zone. He is also known to be personable and an excellent interview.

Recently, Joaquin Phoenix has begun popping up all over the news media looking like a homeless Vietnam vet--scraggly beard and hair, bizarre clothes, ridiculous purple sunglasses--and claiming that he is retiring from acting to pursue a career in Hip-Hop.

His most recent appearance on Letterman (the "debut" of his new persona) is rapidly becoming a YouTube phenomenon. At first, the public thought Phoenix was pulling a joke, but Phoenix has claimed that he isn't kidding.

Here's a pre-persona interview with Phoenix:

And here's the most recent interview:

It's all too perfect. Phoenix is dressed up as the antithesis of himself. He's no longer charismatic and charming. He's not himself. Actors don't go on shows like David Letterman's if they're a mess. They cancel. They disappear. Managers try to confine train wrecks to the private realm.

He's acting.

Phoenix has got something up his sleeve. Maybe he's working on a new film where he plays this character--a biopic on an odd white guy who loses everything and tries to start from scratch in the music industry. He's working on the kind of character that we saw in Walk the Line, a character who is touching, endearing, embarrassing, and miserable.

What better way to promote something than to pull a stunt and let the Internet go wild for it? And in this age of cynics, the only way to truly trick people into following your marketing campaign is to trick them into thinking that no actual marketing is involved.

Joaquin Phoenix is a genius. Or at least, he's involved with some people who are brilliant. Maybe it's the film's director, maybe it's Mr. Phoenix's manager. Turns out Hollywood isn't as dumb as we thought.

\m/

Why I hate you: A letter to Nick Jameson

2009-02-01T01:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Nick Jameson,

I hate you. I hate you so goddamn much. Whoa. Wait. Before you get all defensive, let me explain the story of how I came to hate you. This is probably very confusing considering that you have never heard of me. An explanation may be in order.

It all begins with the bass guitar, an instrument that I began learning to play approximately 4 months ago. I have made decent progress, even learning a few difficult songs to my own satisfaction. Did you know that I can play Deep Purple's "Space Truckin'" all the way through? Fills and everything. That's pretty impressive for a guy who hasn't been playing too long.

So I was feeling all cool after learning this awesome song, and I was looking through my iPod and I found a song from the 1970s called "Slow Ride" by a kick-ass classic rock band called Foghat. The bass part sounded awesome, so I spent a fateful afternoon trying to learn it.

I hope my upstairs neighbors did not call the police. Rarely outside of domestic disturbances does one utter the word "fuck" so much. Who the hell plays this?, I thought. He is so goddamn good.

I went to Wikipedia, which told me that you, sir, were the bass player on that track. Fuck you. How do you play like that? How do you blend such amazing smooth fills with solid rock rhythms and guttural slaps and pops? It's fucking impossible to play like that.

But that wasn't all Wikipedia told me. Wikipedia also told me that you are a well-established screen and voice actor, with over 100 credits in various forms of media. What? You do voices and shit? You get to act? In Spider-Man cartoons? And . . . Oh my God, and you were on Lost too. FUCK! How many of my dreams are you going to live out? Do you know how awesome your life is? Do you realize how cool you are?

You fucking better realize.

Fuck.

Your friend,

Evan

The man I hate:

P.S. If you ever read this, Nick Jameson, please consider the rewards of altruism, specifically in the form of free slap bass lessons for a poor college student who cannot slap nor pop on the bass and sounds stupid when he tries.

Why babies are not good snacks

2009-01-28T21:14:00.000-08:00

The Internet thinks that I eat babies.

I already know they're high in cholesterol. That's why I don't eat them.

Why I shouldn't design greeting cards

2009-01-26T23:23:00.000-08:00

I drew this for a design class. The assignment was to depict a moment of honesty.

Why pretty hair is a good accessory for rocking

2009-01-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

Toxic Holocaust is one of the best neo-thrash groups currently performing. I saw them live the other day, and I have to admit that they stole the show away from 3 Inches of Blood, certainly a difficult feat.

While they were playing. I was trying to wrap my brain around exactly what they had going for them. Good riffs? Of course. Performance of a song called "Feedback, Blood and Distortion"? Sweet. A drummer with aviator sunglasses? Win.

But...

Those were all good things, but they weren't necessarily worthy of topping 3 Inches of Blood. The je ne sais quoi itched in my mind. What was it? I couldn't concentrate for some reason. My eyes were mesmerized by the beautiful, platinum blond locks of frontman Joel Grind. His hair bounced and layered like a shampoo commercial. A really goddamn annoying shampoo commercial with full-bodied and moisturized strands and I couldn't think because it was invading my brain and it was so damn silky and then I was moshing. Moshing and the hair was right before me, slamming forward and backward in gorgeous waves in time with the music and the colors and sounds blurred into a fantastic mental pudding of sensation.

Metallica, you could learn a lesson from this. Stop recording shitty albums and just schedule an appointment for a $200 stylist. This means you, James "I-cut-my-hair-for-MTV" Hetfield.

Why it's probably good that Jon Postel is dead

2009-01-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

I've learned a lot about the history of the Internet in my class on Internet law. There are several figures who are extremely interesting as the creators of both initial Internet technology and culture. One of the most notable is Jon Postel. As The Economist once wrote, "If the Net does have a God, he is probably Jon Postel."

Without going into too much detail, I can tell you that Postel was an eccentric badass. (At one point in 1998, his personal computer was the "root" of the entire internet, and he had complete control over everything). He died of heart failure before the web really took off, and after reading about the noble aspirations that computer scientists had for a connected world, I think that Postel's death wasn't so untimely.

I hope I can stay in this class even though the professor saw me drawing these...

P.S. cakefarts.com is fucked up.

Jon Postel Returns to Earth: Part 1

Jon Postel Returns to Earth: Part 2

\m/

Why Christmas music is not very metal

2008-12-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas music is terrible. I only realized recently how much carols suck. And they've gotten away with so much, simply because we're all so used to hearing them. But if you manage to listen to them with a fresh perspective and reset your brain a little to erase all of those happy childhood memories associated with Bing Crosby I guarantee you that you will ruin your holiday just a little bit. That's what Mötley Mëdia is all about. Ruining everything.

I present to you the worst Christmas carol lyrics of all time, juxtaposed against heavy metal lyrics to highlight their awfulness.

"Hear them ring/Ding-a-ling"
--Silver Bells

What kind of moron wrote such a childlike onomatopoeia and managed to get it onto the radio every December for 60 years? I should be mad, but I'm almost sort of impressed. It's just so bad. No one says "ding-a-ling" in any context ever. How come we keep singing this fucking song?

Now, imagine if Metallica had tried to put this kind of shit into For Whom The Bell Tolls, which contains the amazingly cool lines, "Blackened roar, massive roar fills the crumbling sky/Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry."

Taking a cue from Silver Bells, however, we get, "Ding-a-ling, Ding-a-ling fills the crumbling sky/Ding-a-ling fills his soul with a ruthless cry."

Not even James Hetfield could have made that sound cool.

"Have a holly jolly Christmas/and in case you didn't hear/oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas/This year."
--A Holly Jolly Christmas

There is so much wrong with this song, I don't even know where to start. Maybe I should just have you re-read those lyrics and really ponder just how dumb it all sounds. "Holly" is a noun, not an adjective. You can't have a "Holly Christmas." You could have a Christmas that was "Holly-full," as in, full of Holly, but your Christmas cannot be holly. Also, the interior rhyme in this song is just getting out of hand. I imagine songwriter Johnny Marks (Thanks, Wikipedia!) sitting at a piano babbling words that end in "-olly" and just scribbling lyrics like a moron. In addition to the ridiculous rhyming here, the song actually assumes you are not listening. "In case you didn't hear," it says. Thank you, I hadn't been listening to the song up until you said that and I almost missed the important message. This is particularly helpful for everyone who bought the single and may not have understood that it was a song about Holly Jolly Christmases.

Now imagine if Ratt had used similar tactics in writing their smash success, Round and Round. As is, the chorus goes, "Round and round/Well, love will find a way, just give it time/Round and Round/What comes around goes around"

However, imagine a Johnny Marks version of Ratt: "Round and round/Well, above the ground and underground too/All around/Pound for pound and making sounds/I bet you aren't listening."

It's horrific.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer/Had a very shiny nose/and if you ever saw it/you would even say it glowed."
--Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer.

This has bothered me since I was a kid. Is his nose shiny or glowing? Those can be complete opposites. Is it shiny like metal? I'm imagining a shiny red Christmas ornament at this point. But wait, if I take a shiny red ornament into a dark place, it isn't going to glow, because "shiny" means that it reflects light and, in a place with no light, there's nothing to reflect so it isn't going to look special. So now I'm imagining a glowing sphere that has a light inside. And the light emanating from within the sphere negates whatever shiny quality is present on the sphere's surface. And the more I think the more pissed off I get. FUCK. This is so dumb. I just spent so much time thinking about an imaginary character and I could have been sleeping or something. And guess who wrote this fucking thing? Johnny Marks, the same genius who penned Holly Jolly Bullshit.

I imagine a Cannibal Corpse song written in this sort contradictory style. Let's just tack on some Johnny Marks to some lyrics from Meat Hook Sodomy. "Butchery, my meat hooks sharpened to penetrate/Emasculate, gouging crotches I will eat/No wait, I won't do that/That's actually quite gross/You would even say that sodomy is not what I will be doing with my meat hook."

/w\

Why you should go see "Slumdog Millionaire"

2008-12-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

...because it's the greatest thing ever put on film. That's why.

Never before have I seen a film with such a degree of raw, passionate humanity. The characters in "Slumdog" are vibrating with a fantastic energy that I found absolutely captivating--captivating in a way that I have never before seen in a motion picture. Over the course of two hours I watched a true epic unfold, an epic of sex and death and love and hatred and tears of joy and tears of sadness.

Director Danny Boyle hinted this vision of raw humanity with earlier works like "Trainspotting" and "Millions," but "Slumdog" is his ultimate achievement. Unfortunately, I think it is too brilliant for American audiences to give it its box-office due, but my hope is that it will have legs on DVD and, like past greats like "The Shawshank Redemption," it will gain popular respect in time.

But until then, get to the goddamn theater and be blown away.

\m/

Why Facebook's word verification software is dorp

2008-12-19T13:54:00.001-08:00

Recently, Facebook has added a feature that occasionally forces you to perform a "Security Check" when you post on someone's wall or update your status. I recently tried to share a link with my friend and found myself on an infuriating journey of word recognition. I reproduce that journey for you here.

This is what I got when I first tried to post the link:

First of all, "Stricker" is not a word. "Sticker" is. But somehow Facebook believes that by adding an "r" to a normal word, they will prevent the internet from hacking my friend's account. Second of all, I don't even think that there is a word to the right of "Stricker." It looks like a sideways hammer. Or a little man shooting a tilde out of his torso. Yet it clearly instructs me to type "both words." I would like to type both words, but there is no way I am going to be able to type that fucking thing using the alphabet on my keyboard. I obviously can't write "little hammer" in the fucking box. So now I have a made-up word and an imaginary shape that apparently is made of letters. Finally, in frustration, I click on "Try different words."

Here's what I got next:

So I've still got "Stricker", which is totally infuriating. And for the second time there isn't a word next to "Stricker". Instead of a word, I have a number. A number is not a word, Facebook. To make matters worse, I can't fucking read the number. My first instinct is to go with 1,607. But it could be 1,807 or even 1,887. I consider just going with my gut reaction of 1,607 but then I remember that if I get it wrong, Facebook won't post the link and I'll have to re-try anyway with two new "words", so I just give up and click "Try different words".

Next, I get:

Okay, now you're just mocking me, Facebook. Now you're just making fun of how many times I've clicked "Try different words." You know what? I do feel pretty fucking helpless. Oh, and I see you haven't stopped giving me made-up words. "Dorp." Awesome. It's a totally original composition, Facebook. Some artists work with paint and canvas, you impishly rearrange letters around to create new turns of phrase! How delightful, Facebook! You have called me a "Helpless Dorp". LAWL.

Fuck you, Facebook.

/w\

Why even Scorpion can be a good parent

2008-12-19T00:05:00.001-08:00

I love making comics, but I'm usually a fan of the organic look rendered by simple freehand drawing. I think the overall effect of this one, however, relied on stark duplication of the images, and I didn't want to labor over a drawing table re-drawing Scorpion and his son Billy (Yeah, I named Scorpion's kid "Billy") over and over and over. Adobe Illustrator to the rescue.

Click on the thumbnail to view full size image.

Why you should support this band pt. 2: Skeletonwitch

2008-12-18T12:50:00.000-08:00

At first listen, Ohio Metal act Skeletonwitch sounds like a band from decades past. The machine gun drums sound like late 1980s thrash. The dual guitar harmonies sound like early 1980s British Metal. And the screeching vocals sound like a 1990s Scandinavian Black Metal outfit from the most frigid corners of a frostbitten kingdom. Yet Skeletonwitch is a currently recording outfit, formed in 2003.

Thank god for you, Skeletonwitch. It's so refreshing to hear some classic Metal influences in this world of Screamo bullshit. Yet, at the same time, what I think is most appealing about SW is that they would totally appeal to fans of bands like As I Lay Dying and Underoath. So, not only is Skeletonwitch pure, unadulterated Metal, they also have the potential of breaking into a more mainstream following and steering the current direction of hard rock in a better direction.

http://www.myspace.com/skeletonwitch

\m/

Oh, by the way, you might notice in the above video that, at 0:05, the lead singer seems to be throwing the Un-Metal horns at the audience. Clearly this gesture does not refer to his band itself. I can only assume that the crowd that night was incredibly boring and were not dismembering each other in the mosh pit, so the lead singer used the Un-Metal horns to say, "Hey, look at how not Metal you are. Get your asses moving. I want to have blood spattered all over me and my leather gauntlets."

Why Bose should go out of business

2008-12-08T22:59:00.000-08:00

Look, I'm sure Bose makes great products. I'm not knocking their sound quality. What I do despise is their advertising.

There's a commercial for the Bose Sounddock that runs every so often on some of the major cable stations (TBS, A&E, CNN, Discovery, etc.). Unfortunately I can't find an online version of it, nor is it on often enough for me to be able to rip it to a digital format. Many of you have probably seen the ad, however. It shows people using the Bose Sounddock in various locations--at a tropical themed party on a deck, in a well-lit kitchen, and some other pseudo-realistic locales. A man with a soothing voice narrates over the images, expounding upon the benefits of the product. Pretty standard stuff.

It took me several times to notice what was wrong with the commercial. Something about it seemed off. Then, during my third viewing, it hit me. THERE IS NO MUSIC IN THE COMMERCIAL. None. There is only the soothing voice. There is no music in the background. There is not a single musical note in the whole commercial.

Bose, what do your products do? Why do people use your Sounddock?

TO LISTEN TO FUCKING MUSIC, GODDAMMIT!

Worst ad ever. That's like a camera commercial without photos or a shampoo commercial without hair. Or a razor commercial without a woman who strokes a man's face at the end.

/w\

Why you should read Fnorkin comics. Now.

2008-12-05T02:28:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER: While I do enjoy making comics of my own, I did not create nor do I contribute to Fnorkin comics. This is a plug for someone who is much more clever than I.

http://newfnorkin.atspace.com/comics.htm

Go to the above link. And laugh your ass off.

Every once and a while in this crazy digital world of ours, there comes to pass an internet comic that is actually remarkably clever and doesn't rely on WoW jokes for humor. Fnorkin is one such place.

Fnorkin is a brilliant melding of postmodern social satire with shroomy randomness--the formula that more humorists should follow in this day and age. The jokes are usually very straightforward and, refreshingly, you never have to wade through 16 panels and 300 words to hit the punchline. The references are varied and witty, ranging from pop-culture (Meat Loaf, Eleanor Rigby) to literature (Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby) to politics (The Superfund project).

Enjoy.

\m/

Why the word 'glitter' should be more evident in glitter fabric paint

2008-12-05T02:12:00.000-08:00

So . . .

I had a black hat with no logo on it and I thought that the logo for 1980s thrash act "Metal Church" would look excellent across the front. I drove to my local Wal-Mart and purchased some red and white fabric paint for the project, then skulked into the dungeon of my room and proceeded to paint diligently.

About 3/4 of the way through, a mass of glitter exploded out of the white bottle. I stared at it for a moment, thinking to myself, "why the hell would there be glitter in this?" Then, in horror, I looked at the label. Printed in tiny letters below the word "white" was the word "glitter".

"FUCK!" tumbled from my lips as I realized the implications of my mistake. I dashed into the living room--an area with far better illumination than just a computer monitor--and stared down in horror at the logo. My hat looked, shall we say, like it would have enjoyed seeing the Village People in concert--some sort of escapee from the glamourous club scene of underground 1970s San Francisco.

I fumed. For about 2 minutes. Then I remembered the can of WD-40 in the garage. Several matches later, I had allowed my hat to die with dignity--to die a heavy metal death by fire.

Very un-metal of you, fabric paint company that I can't remember the name of because I threw the stupid bottles away already. Most un-metal indeed.

/w\

Why Hip-Hop might be around a little bit longer

2008-11-24T01:12:00.000-08:00

I just read an interesting piece in the Entertainment Weekly blogs that discussed the future of Hip-Hop under a black president. Actually, rather than paraphrasing, it might be better to just put the link here. It's interesting and I promise it isn't too long.

http://margeauxs-mix.ew.com/2008/11/talib-kweli.html

For the last few years, I have become more and more convinced that history's cyclical nature will spell doom for Hip-Hop's mainstream popularity. Hair Metal experienced a boom of roughly a decade, beginning around the time Quiet Riot's Metal Health topped the charts in 1983 and ending about the time that Guns 'n' Roses got experimental and released an album of all covers in 1993.

Hip-Hop has been around for a long time. But only in the last decade has it been truly ubiquitous. Under normal circumstances (i.e. the kind of racist voting environment that produces white presidents) I would probably be investing my money in rock acts and readying myself (with gusto) for an era of rock songs played in malls and at parties. I stopped going to school dances in about ninth grade when I realized how much I hated the music. I think the last straw was at the age of 15 when I was talking to some friends off to the side of the dance floor and I heard a familiar bass line. In joy I cried, "Queen!" Everyone stared at me until someone finally said, "What are you talking about? This is Vanilla Ice."

I think Obama will probably reinvigorate a generation that is becoming jaded with black culture, and it probably will lead to a resurgence of Hip-Hop, prolonging its mainstream popularity. I've done some soul searching, and I've decided that I'm okay with this, provided that Obama's high profile position will cause Hip-Hop to undergo a major change. In my ideal world, Soulja Boy will crank dat and donk his way into traffic and T. Pain will overdose on pro-tools and enter a permanently unresponsive comatose state. To fill the void, we will see a return to the kind of intelligent rhymes and sampling present in Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, and Eric B. and Rakim.

It could happen. Obama has done some amazing things, and as Talib Kweli pointed out in the Entertainment Weekly piece, Obama has inspired rappers to say, "We gotta stop saying 'n----' so much. We gotta take care of our families. We gotta raise our babies."

I'm looking to you, Talib. I watched some of your stuff on YouTube and I can't bang my head to it, but I can respect it.

"Real Hip-Hop is missing from the shelves." That's pretty metal, Talib. You rock.

\m/

Why even comic books can be really really pretentious

2008-11-20T00:46:00.000-08:00

Sit back and enjoy the B.S.

I just completed an essay for my Mass Media Theory & Criticism class that is totally awesome. Oh, it isn't particularly insightful, but it is really impressive that I managed to churn out 600 words about a single page from a 1943 Captain America comic. I also managed to use a lot of fancy jargon to make it extra academic sounding. And yet, despite all of the jargon, I basically say only two things (which we all knew anyway): 1. During WWII we hated Germans. 2. Kids in 1943 couldn't throw their dimes fast enough at overly patriotic shit and everyone got really fucking rich because of it.

Below I reproduce for you an excerpt of the paper, as well as the comic page that I wrote about. (Click the thumbnail for a larger image.)

P.S. I think that Captain America's declaration of "Breaking your Nazi Jaws gives me great pleasure" is one of the best things ever printed on paper.

Discourse Analysis of Golden Age Comic Books: Conventional Schema of Patriotism

The medium of sequential artwork conveys story through a combination of images and text, the latter appearing most often as talk or thought bubbles (what [media scholar] Chatman describes as “dialogue bubbles with visual ‘thought attachment’”.) The dialogue bubbles in this particular page contain text with built in accent notations. In other words, the nationality and race of a character is discernible separate from their actual visual manifestation, existing merely in the manner in which they speak. The German Nazis in this narrative speak with a heavy, exaggerated accent. Using Chatman’s language again, the combination of body language, visage, and stunted speech exposes the trait of Nazi’s as generally despicable and of questionable character.

The World War II era was also highly patriotic, and large publishing companies likely had an interest in conveying patriotic messages in their media, both to earn favor with government institutions (comic companies used a great deal of paper during a time when paper was collected from the private sector to aid the war effort) and because patriotism was already established as highly popular and there was an economic interest in continuing these themes. In other words, the economic interest in the cultural trend of patriotic comics homogenized the medium.

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Why you should support this band pt. 1: The Goddamn Gallows

2008-11-16T02:41:00.000-08:00

The Goddamn Gallows are a raw, energetic trio based out of Detroit, Michigan. I caught their live act tonight, and I can genuinely say that it was one of the most impressive (and certainly psycho) Psychobilly shows I've ever attended.

Lead singer and guitarist Mikey Classic is a brilliant musician who handles the hollow-body guitar like nobody's business. His fingers are fast but he's got a good sense for melody, which tempers some of the more intense punk influences to a manageable level. His vocals present a similar duality of the melodic flirting with a harder edge. His lower register wails like a classic 50s ballad, but he can quickly turn from crooning to screaming as he channels both Johnny Cash and Sparky from Demented Are Go. In addition, Classic throws in some bizzare noises for an extra dose of oozing horrorbilly, including maniacal laughter, throat vibrating roars, and monkey screeches. The latter is featured prominently in the song, "Planet of the Apes."

As for the rhythm section, both the bass player and drummer are tight and fast. The bass player was refreshingly energetic, adding a bizarre theatrical element to the performance as he pretended to exorcise demons from Classic by slapping his palm on Classic's forehead while waggling his tongue like some sort of revival reverend.

It's late and I'm tired, but before I close this quick-capsule review, I must mention that, at the show I saw, the Gallows actually had four members. The final addition to the group was their manic washboard player, who looks and plays like some sort of feral mountain man who was handed spoons and told to keep time on short notice. At the close of the show, he lit one corner of his washboard on fire and proceeded to blow a four foot ball of flame over the audience. I can honestly say that was the first time I have ever seen someone breathe fire off of either a musical instrument or a device used in cleaning clothing. It was basically the most metal thing I've ever seen.

Check out their myspace page for more songs.

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Why some brands are better with Metal!

2008-11-02T04:11:00.000-08:00

I figured that some of these boring companies could use a Mötley Makeöver to help them reach a demographic that would not normally purchase their products or services.

Also, for those of you who find yourselves easily bored, you may simply need to purchase a blue felt tip pen and some notebook paper. It works for me.

(Click on thumbnail for full.)

\m/

Why some things should never spawn fan fiction

2008-09-07T01:47:00.001-07:00

I decided to write some fan fiction for the most un-fan-fictionable franchises in the universe. Some things just don't translate to prose very well.

Mortal Kombat

Raiden grit his teeth, staring through a haze of pain at the man in the blue and black ninja costume. Raiden could feel that he was close to death, and while Sub-Zero seemed close as well, Raiden could tell that Sub-Zero had already hurt him more than Raiden had been able to return the pain.

As Raiden pondered these things, he was jolted out of his daydream by a sudden movement as Sub-Zero suddenly dropped to one knee. Raiden tensed. He knew that position. Soon, Sub-Zero would emit an icy blast that would freeze anything it touched to the spot. He had to avoid that blast. Raiden moved quickly. He engaged his leg muscles in a massive jump, tucking his body so that he flipped in the air. On the way down, he jerked his leg out, catching Sub-Zero directly in the chin.

As Raiden's foot made contact with Sub-Zero, however, he suddenly felt an icy blast chill him to the bone. What? Somehow Sub-Zero had managed to flip away from Raiden's onslaught, leaving an ice copy of himself instead. The ice copy had rendered Raiden frozen in mid-air, totally vulnerable to attack. Sub-Zero rushed forward, then crouched and sprung upwards in a massive uppercut. Raiden felt his body thrown upward by the blow.

The pain of Sub-Zero's punch was further accentuated by the pain in Raiden's back as it hit the ceiling, which gave way in a shower of debris. Raiden flew upwards still further. "That was one hell of a punch," thought Raiden as his body peaked in the air for a split-second and came crashing back down on an unfamiliar surface. "My God," he thought, staring around from underneath his straw hat. "There's a second story to this temple!" Yet just as this thought occurred to him, Sub-Zero landed a final punch that rendered Raiden senseless. Raiden swayed in place, helpless. "FINISH HIM," cried the massively booming voice of God.

Sub-Zero backed away from the semi-conscious Raiden. He seemed to be readying himself for some sort of powerful finishing move. Sub-Zero frowned in concentration, gathering himself. After a moment, he began to jerk his body forward, forward again, then back, then forward again. He kicked at the air, then paused, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. In frustration, Sub-Zero began to jerk back and forth again, but it was too late. Raiden's vision went dark and he lost consciousness, tumbling backward onto the cold stone.

Pac-Man

There was nothing in the world better than dots, thought Pac-Man as he raced along the black corridors. Life was good. A long corridor and all the dots in the world. Pac-Man munched happily as he floated forward. With each bite, he happily shouted, "Reh!" As he sped forward, his shouts blended together to form a melodic, "Reh reh reh reh reh reh reh."

At that instant, just when Pac-Man least suspected it, a pink shape popped out of nowhere. Christ, It was one of those damn ghosts! "Curses," thought Pac-Man. "Why do they hate me so?!" Pac-Man, knowing that the touch of a ghost meant a melting death, immediately reversed directions and floated for his life. "Ballls! How on earth am I going to get out of this one?" Just when it seemed as if things couldn't get any worse, another ghost appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Pac-Man veered left sharply, munching dots and crying with fear.

Yet all hope was not lost. Up ahead loomed a massive dot, a massive dot containing magical matter-transforming properties. Pac-Man raced towards it, feeling the ghosts hot on his round back. Closer and closer the large dot loomed, until finally his jaws closed around it. There was a shudder and a little musical interlude as the ghosts began flashing rapidly. Pac-Man turned around. "Now we'll see who hunts who!" He cried, his blood boiling with hatred. Pac-Man's jaws snapped at a ghost, utterly disintegrating its body. He felt the ghosts energy filling his stomach. It was even more satisfying than dots. "Now what, bitch!? I just ate your ass," Pac-Man bellowed.

Family Guy

Peter Griffin was hungry. That much he knew. As he stared into the refrigerator looking for bacon, he suddenly became aware that his oddly attractive wife Lois was talking to him.

"Peter, I don't think it's a good idea to build your own homecoming float! You don't even know when the parade is!"

Peter frowned. "Shut up, Lois! You're being stupid. Almost as stupid as Meg."

Upstairs, the sound of Meg sobbing became suddenly audible to both of them. They took no notice. Peter turned back to the fridge. "Oh," he cried. "We're out of bacon!" He stared around wildly. "This is worse than that time I tried to play tennis with Gary Coleman!"

Both he and Lois simultaneously remembered the time that Peter tried to play tennis with Gary Coleman.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Billy stared at the dinosaur. The T-Rex was bearing down fast, its beady eyes focused on Billy's small frame. There was no way to outrun it. Billy stared around wildly. His eyes rested upon a deep pit, directly to his left. He could run to that pit and plunge into its depths and hope that he survived whatever horrors lurked underground. Or . . . Billy stared around some more. Or he could climb the vine to his right and fend for himself in the trees.

The T-Rex was rushing forward, he didn't have time to dawdle. At the last instant, Billy decided to risk the pit. He darted to it, falling into the inky blackness. He fell for quite some time before landing on a soft growth of moss. "Thank god for moss," thought Billy. Just then, a figure loomed out of the shadows directly ahead of him. It was Abraham Lincoln.

"Welcome to the pit of time," said Lincoln somberly.

"Thanks," said Billy.

"Unfortunately," Lincoln said, scowling, "you are intruding upon a time that is not yours."

Lincoln pulled a large gun from inside his suit coat. Billy began to cry out a protest but it was too late. The shot rang out and Billy fell back, dead.

"Fuck it," thought Billy's spirit. "I'm going back and climbing the vine. I always die."

Why naming your band can be fun and easy!

2008-08-16T15:07:00.001-07:00

Why waste countless hours hanging around with your bandmates and throwing out name after name after name? With this simple naming guide, all you have to do is cram your music into a neat little genre and follow these easy steps!

50s Rock 'n' Roll: Take your front man's full name, then add "and the" and choose a non-sensical name for the rest of the band that has a good, active adjective in it. Alliteration is good too. Drop the "g" from "--ing" words if possible.

Examples: "Jack Smith and the Jumping Jimlies," "Frank Castle and his Rip-Roarin' Townrunners"

60s Rock/Pop: Be on acid for two days. Then choose a name with the following construction: "The [Bizarre plural noun]."

Examples: "The Quartermen," "The Candybops"

70s Funk: It doesn't matter, as long as the word "Funk" is in your band name. The weirder the better.

Examples: "Funkagaloop," Refunkastop"

80s Thrash Metal: Pick two words that are extreme or have to do with swords or battles. Now spell one wrong and combine them into one word. Continue using this name even after your music is no longer extreme in any way.

Examples: "Epikrush," "Metalblayde"

Melodic Scandinavian Metal: Follow the exact method of creating an 80s Thrash Metal name, but don't misspell or combine the words.

Examples: "Metal Blade," "Avenged Sword"

Indy: Reference an event that happened to you and two of your closest friends, but try to pick something that sounds kind of poetic. Also remember to put verbs in tenses that make the event sound as though it is happening or just happened.

Examples: "Jerry's shoes fall off," "Broken down van"

Emo/Screamo: Choose a macabre sounding word from a literary work by T.S. Elliot or Edgar Allen Poe and follow it with a word involving your immature, high school existence.

Examples: "Telltale tears," "Wasteland locker"

Grindcore/Goregrind: Choose a synonym for "mutilation," then put it in the past tense. Follow it with a medical term that is extremely technical. (Note: The more illegible your band logo is, the more hardcore you are. Your merch should be complete gibberish.)

Examples: "Disemboweled myelinated nerve fibers," "Cannibalized endosymbiosis."

Why all wimpy music should beware - The 10 greatest true metal songs of all time

2008-08-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

(Click on the song title for a link to a YouTube video)

10. Metal Church - "Ton of Bricks" - Probably the most under-appreciated band of the 1980s Thrash Metal scene, Metal Church easily deserves a place alongside Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Metallica. Some people claim that the "big four" of Thrash should be expanded to include Exodus, but I won't let Exodus in until after Metal Church makes the cut. "Ton of Bricks" is a brilliant, aggressive, face-destroying metal song. David Wayne's wailing vocals soar above brilliant guitar riffs that alternate between manic pulsing and open-ringing power. Strong bass playing and solid drumming keep this track focused on its goal of destroying eardrums and speaker stacks around the world.

Lyrical highlight: "Rip it up, kick it out / Blood begins to flow / Taking chances, the only way I know / Sacrificed everything / I'm the grinding stone / Ripping flesh, drawing blood / I'd love to eat your bones." You know a song is metal when the words "bones" and "eat" appear in the same line.

9. Emperor - "The Loss and Curse of Reverence" - Emperor remains one of the most respected Scandinavian Black Metal bands ever, and songs like "Reverence" prove why. Emperor's incredibly fast and technical playing create a wall of fuzzy distortion that makes my eyes water, yet they ground their insanity with a somber symphonic track that sits calmly in the background. The symphonic elements of Emperor serve as the skeletal structure for an overactive, vibrating muscle structure, creating a weird blend of energy and maturity. This is especially evident on this track, which contains some of the most memorable riffs from Emperor's career.

Lyrical highlight: Absolutely nothing. I can't understand a fucking word he says.

8. Dragonforce - "Revolution Deathsquad" - Dragonforce is a controversial band in metal circles, and I'll probably take some shit for putting a melodic metal song like "Deathsquad" alongside Emperor, Carcass, and Immortal. The truth is that Dragonforce are incredibly talented and surprisingly listenable considering their tempo. Their mainstream appeal frightens a lot of metalheads who have not had good experiences with metal evolving to seek commercial success (and who can blame them--Limp Bizkit anyone?). Luckily for metalheads everywhere, Dragonforce is uncompromising in their pursuit of crafting totally predictable and endorphin-releasing songs about quests, fire, flames, flying through said fire and flames, heroes of days past, unbelievable odds, and perseverance against said odds to restore humanity's rightful place in the universe. This particular track is about all of those things, but I feel that the solo section is slightly better and the chorus is slightly catchier than other tracks, so I chose this as the representative song from one of the most important modern metal bands.

Lyrical highlight: "Rise over shadow mountains, blazing with power / Crossing valleys, endless tears, in unity we stand / Far and wide, across the land the victory is ours / On towards the gates of reason / Fight for the truth and the freedom / Gloria! Gloria!!! Gloria-aaaaaaaaahhh!!!!" I suddenly regret being born in this century and would like to instead re-do my life as a huge warlord on a battlefield in the middle ages somewhere.

7. Candlemass - "Bewitched" - I find Doom Metal on the whole to be a pretentious, unlistenable genre populated by perma-baked musicians whose marijuana-addled brains are frightened by tempos above 60 bpm. The exception to this rule is Candlemass, one of the earliest doom groups and one of the most (poorly) imitated. Candlemass stuck to the roots of metal and paid tribute to the masters themselves, Black Sabbath. "Bewitched" is almost a crooning love song, but with a heavy metal twist of seduction and hypnotism and the black arts. Vocals are excellent--so good that lead singer Messiah Marcolin somehow manages to make these themes terrifying rather than cheesy. The plodding guitar is dark and almost disfigured, creating the perfect atmosphere for the story to unfold.

Lyrical highlight: "I am the master of the enchanted true / I'll play for your joy, for your soul, for your doom / My fingers they dance upon the strings like fire / weaving a spell of my burning desire." How awesome is this? It sounds like some fucked up Stephen King story.

6. Immortal - "One by One" - Immortal began as a strict conformist to the second wave of Black Metal, but their recent albums have combined the influence of German Thrash to create a genre that has been dubbed, "Blackened Thrash." Immortal's most recent release, 2002's Sons of Northern Darkness, marks the high point in the ongoing development of this sub-genre. "One by One" opens the album with a soul-shattering ball of noise, created by Horgh's godlike blastbeats and Abbath Doom Occulta's throaty rasping vocals (allmusic.com aptly describes Occulta's vocal style as "reptilian"). About a minute into the track, right before this sonic assault becomes overwhelming, Immortal brilliantly drops the tempo and suddenly runs a series of catchy guitar riffs. I dare you not to injure your neck while headbanging to this song.

Lyrical highlight - "Grey mists swirl across the meadows / Where battles once ruled the steps / Where the ancient armors of bronze / Are buried and corroded by time / Strong were those who won the war / And the legends tell only of wrath." In a world overwrought with metal songs about battles, Immortal manages to elevate their lyrics above the fray with a poetic edge that I really appreciate.

5. Metallica - "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - Before Metallica totally ruined everything in 1996 with the mainstream travesty "Load," Metallica was a bona-fide badass metal group. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is an unrelenting, chugging, mid-tempo metal song that is guaranteed to shatter some teeth if played at appropriate volume. Excellent production renders the guitars with a swelling, full-bodied sound that manages to stay strong without eclipsing James Hetfield's manic vocals as he rasps out some awesomely generic bullshit about a battlefield.

Lyrical highlight: "Blackened roar, massive roar fills the crumbling sky / Shattered goal fills the soul with a ruthless cry." Epic shit.

4. Carcass - "Heartwork" - Carcass, in my opinion, is easily the best Death Metal band ever. (Apologies to rabid Morbid Angel fans). Unlike In Flames and At the Gates, Carcass managed to make Death Metal melodic without eliminating any of the brutality necessary for the genre label. With "Heartwork," Carcass alternates between intense death metal and Iron Maiden-like twin guitar harmonies. On paper, this diversity sounds like the classic folly of a band with far too many influences to contain in one song, but straightforward song-writing and clean production keep this track from being anything but brilliant.

Lyrical highlight: "Works of art, painted black / Magniloquent, bleeding dark / Monotonous palate, murky spectrum, grimly unlimited." Like most Carcass lyrics, I can't decide if this is stunning poetry hidden indside a brutal metal song or if it is just bullshit that sounds really profound.

3. Motörhead - "Overkill" - The first time I heard this song (long before I knew much about the history of heavy metal), I thought, "man, Motörhead is old but they're awesome. I guess they still know how to write kick ass song even after all these years." Then I looked up the album of the same name and nearly lost my mind. This song came out in Nineteen-Seventy-Fucking-Nine!!! This song came out two years before Metallica began practicing in garages and three years before Maiden's Number of the Beast redefined heavy metal. "Overkill" is the most groundbreaking metal track of all time, and it still irritates the neighbors better than almost anything. As an added bonus, "Overkill" fools you by ending and beginning again not once, but twice. Normally this would be irritating, but considering the name of the track, it seems appropriate.

Lyrical highlight: "Know your body's made to move, you feel it in your guts / Rock 'n' roll ain't worth the name if it don't make you strut." Lemmy may be a speed addict and a petri dish of STDs, but he sure knows how to write some good ol' fashioned rock lyrics.

2. Mercyful Fate - "A Dangerous Meeting" - Like Motörhead, Mercyful Fate is an incredibly influential metal band who wrote songs far ahead of their time. Yet while Motörhead chugged forward mostly on pure energy, Mercyful Fate crafted metal into an art and delivered compositions that backed epic lyrics with epic compositions. "A Dangerous Meeting" boasts a sprawling, multi-part song structure that puts most 1980s metal compositions to shame. The track opens Fate's 1984 masterpiece album Don't Break the Oath with a gorgeously memorable riff. Soon, King Diamond's soaring vocals wail hauntingly, intertwined with the twin guitars. Yet Diamond, unlike so many of his later songs, manages to keep his falsetto under control until it is absolutely needed for an emotional punch. In this way, "A Dangerous Meeting" avoids sounding like a parody and the high-pitched singing is oddly appealing. Forget three-chord rock. Selling your soul to Mercyful Fate will unlock new wonders of songwriting.

Lyrical highlight: "Seven people here are joining hands / They think they know the spirit to appear / Contact, the table starts to dance / Time is standing still." My Grandma is a devout Christian and would probably take great offense to these lyrics. Seeing as how good metal should probably go against whatever my Grandma believes, I deem this song to be extremely awesome.

1. Iron Maiden - "Aces High" - Iron Maiden has everything that metal needs: strong musicianship, catchy songwriting, epic vocals, and an other-worldy quality that makes them seem more than just men with intsruments. Picking the ultimate Maiden track was difficult, but I finally settled on "Aces High" because I feel that it was the finest era in their long career. The Powerslave album was their heaviest and also their cleanest--the last album to be produced without any artificial synthesizers of any kind. Aces High is epic, but not in a stereotypical medieval battlefield sort of way. Instead, Bruce Dickinson brilliantly transposed his experience as a pilot into heavy metal, creating a set of lyrics with surprising sincerity in their excitement. Nothing evokes a fist pumping sing-along like Bruce "The Air Raid Siren" Dickinson crying, "Ruuunnn! Liiive to flyyyy! Flyyy tooooo liiiive!" Iron Maiden is the best metal band of all time. Anyone who tells you different doesn't understand what metal is all about.

Lyrical highlight: "Rolling, turning, diving / Rolling, turning, diving, going in again / Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die / Run, live to fly, fly to live, aces high." It's simple. But I know it's effective because it makes me want to fly a plane in a dogfight.

And that's the list. Beware, radio-friendly hip-hop and R&B. Angry dudes with guitars and black leather gauntlets are coming for you.

\m/

Why Katy Perry can kiss my ass (and like it)

2008-08-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

Okay. Let's start by posting a link to the song that I will soon rip to shreds. Just in case you've been out of the country or something for the last few months, here is the single by Katy Perry that has taken the Billboard Charts and the iTunes Music Store by storm. Note that I'm posting a live version of the song, and not the polished studio version.

Since this is a musical composition, it seems natural to touch upon the musical aspects of this song. I don't actually have a major problem with the song structure. It's catchy and it leans more towards rock than the majority of the hip-hop-influenced pop that is packaged for solo female artists. Rock influence automatically earns you points here at Mötley Mëdia. Unfortunately, being able to sing also earns you points, and Ms. Perry finds herself canceling out the rock-cred with a major deduction under the vocal category. I would deem her decent in this particular performance, and keep in mind that this is the absolute best one I found of the many live performances available on YouTube. She's pitchy in places and she doesn't have the range to really pull off a performance that makes up for a song title like, "I Kissed a Girl."

God, I sound like Simon from American Idol.

Anyway, I don't really have a huge problem with the music. C for effort, Ms. Perry. You pass.

My REAL problem with this song is content-based. The lyrics are simple, mindless drivel with little poetic value. There is no metaphor in this song. There is nothing elaborate about the subject matter here. This song was written, packaged, and produced for the sole purpose of exciting a demographic of young people who wish to participate in some sort of usurping of the established system without giving up the ability to drive the car that daddy bought them to the mall and back. As homosexuality becomes more and more acceptable in our society, the concept of a gay kiss seems more an more innocent. Especially a lesbian kiss, which you can see on network television nowadays if you stay up late enough to see the "Girls Gone Wild" commercials.

Yeah, I've never seen those myself. But I've heard about them.

Seriously though, not only is lesbianism fairly tame by today's standards, but the lyrics explicitly stress, "hope my boyfriend don't mind it," making it clear that Ms. Perry is indeed heterosexual. She kissed a girl "just to try it." This song doesn't provide any sort of threat to the system, regardless of what some may think. This song brilliantly fits into the niche of the commercialization of non-commercialization. Katy Perry's lesbian kiss will surely enjoy its place alongside My Chemical Romance, jet black emo hair, and driving 5 miles-an-hour over the speed limit.

If you aren't pushing the pedal to the metal, what's the point? Semi-speeding is poser shit. And poser shit is un-metal.

/w\

Why very few comic book movies actually work

2008-07-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have been a comic book fan ever since I was 12 years old, when I bought Captain America vol. 1 #367 and #375 for a dollar apiece a flea market in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Reading those two issues was a revelation. It sounds so cliché, but I seriously was plunged into an incredible world of adventure where splashy colors collided and the only limits were the imaginations of man behind the drafting table. Comic books are sacred to me. During those torrential middle school years that we all look back on and wince, I found safehaven in the pages of comics. I don't mean that I learned a lot of important life lessons from comics or anything like that. I already knew that drugs were bad before Captain America became addicted to meth and beat up Daredevil while tripping balls. (Yes, this is a real Captain America storyline from 1990.)

It wasn't so much the messages in the comics that protected me from becoming overly invested in the petty drama of Middle School, it was simply the fact that I had comics in my closet to come home to. Just having a hobby to direct energy into was a valuable part of my adolescence.

And now Hollywood is ruining everything.

Well, maybe not everything per say, but certainly the majority of comic book adaptations to hit the screen in the last decade have left me apologizing to my friends with the constant and very tiresome phrase, "The comic was way better."

I hate that Hollywood has decided to strip mine the world of sequential artwork for ideas. In an orgy of un-originality and crass commercialism, filmmakers continue to gang-bang franchises into overly-streamlined films with absolutely no heart. I was embarrassed to be a comic book fan after watching the 2005 travesty Fantastic Four, which took some of my favorite Stan Lee creations and turned them into gaudy, shallow, moronic jocks who proclaim things like, "I found a gasket from space." (I think it's worth mentioning that a 1994 version of the FF was produced but unfortunately unreleased. It was produced by B-movie giant Roger Corman and is horrific, yet it somehow maintains a level of charm missing from the new one. Check the trailer here.)

I'm tired of having to apologize for liking comics when my friends turn to me in the movie theater with a look on their face that says, "You like this shit?" The problem is the fact that comic books are not for a mainstream audience. Starting in about the 1980s, some very influential people like Frank Miller and Alan Moore took superheroes and made them gritty and multi-faceted in a way that only a small section of the population could truly enjoy. In other words, comic books became sophisticated and complex to appeal to really nerdy people who have too much time to devote to sophisticated and complex things because they don't have girlfriends.

Most of the comic books being adapted to the big screen are inherently underground. Hollywood is a business first and foremost, so movie producers want to make their big budget films as marketable as possible to the widest possible audience. The resulting films are like buying an elephant to put in your oven. You get the elephant home and then stare at the tiny oven in disbelief. Realizing that you will never get the whole animal in your appliance, you decide to cut off one ear and toss out the rest. When you invite your friends over and proudly fling the oven door open with a flourish, they stare at you and say, "Where the fuck is the elephant that you bought?"

It's just like that. Only the elephant ear in the oven is probably also padded with 200 million dollars.

Luckily for nerds everywhere, some film directors manage to do some creative negotiating and buy a bigger oven. I'm not down on every comic book film out there. Very rarely, I go to the theater and leave with a sense of pride as my friends say, "I really want to read more comics." Without further ado, I give you the top 10 films that capture "comic book spirit." These are the films that really do feel like a comic book. They are fun and they are exciting, but they also have that tiny spark of complexity that elevates them beyond the vomit-inducing gloss of Tim Story.

Honorable Mention: Dick Tracy (1990)

10. The Rocketeer (1991)
9. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

8. Iron Man (2008)

7. Unbreakable (2000)

6. Hellboy (2004)

5. Mystery Men (1999)

4. Batman (1989)

3. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
2. The Incredibles (2004)
1. Sin City (2005)

Why the AFI is so predictable

2008-06-18T16:56:00.000-07:00

No, this is not about the shitty "punk" band A.F.I. If you were looking for a blog about bad music sold at Hot Topic, please close this window, pull your straightened hair even farther over your eyes, wander blindly into the street, and get hit by a vehicle.

I'm talking about the American Film Institute, founded under President Lyndon B. Johnson. (www.afi.com) Every summer, the AFI does a televised event in which they count down 100 movies in some sort of theme. One year they did the 100 greatest comedies, another year they did the 100 best movie quotes (one of their best lists), and last year they updated their 100 best movies of all time list to include some more recent films. Last night was the "10 Top 10" countdown, which counted down the 10 best movies in a variety of genres. City Lights (1931) topped the 10 best romantic comedies, for instance. The Godfather (1972) was the best gangster film (yeah, totally didn't see that one coming either). The full list of the AFI picks is available here. I made some predictions about what the AFI would pick the day before it aired, and I did pretty well. I totally called Snow White (1937) as their favorite animated feature, as well as Vertigo (1958) as the best mystery. I also managed to name 7 of the 10 films picked in the sci-fi category.

The lists are always fairly predictable. The ancient and incontinent film fans vote for movies like Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), which were groundbreaking at the time but are incredibly outdated and boring by today's standards. Just because the live piano player at the moving picture house performed a raging musical score does not mean that it is still exciting. D.W. Griffith was pretty cool, you guys, but his career peeked during World War I. He influenced a lot of people, but they took his ideas and actually made them better. A lot of things have happened since Griffith. Like color. And films without horrifically racist overtones.

The fans in their fifties and sixties tend to vote for movies that they saw in college that were totally cutting-edge and really threatening to the system. Unfortunately, a lot of these don't hold up either. I rented Midnight Cowboy (1969) because it was so controversial at the time and was the only film rated "X" to win an Academy Award. I turned it off 30 minutes in because, like a lot of character-study films from the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was excruciatingly boring. Another film from this era that earned a mere 30 minutes of my attention was Easy Rider (1969). (Oh my God, they smoke marijuana on screen! How anti-establishment of them!) I think I'll do a list of the 10 most overrated films of all time just so I have a good place to rant about how boring Easy Rider was. There's only so many non-wheelie scenes of motorcycles I can watch before the DVD goes back to Blockbuster, people.

Finally, the AFI tends to pepper the middle of their lists with relatively recent movies that were critical and commercial successes and appeal to younger audiences, suck as The Matrix (1999) and Pulp Fiction (1995). Basically, these films are put on the lists to appease the rabid users of IMDB who are obsessed with Tarantino, Peter Jackson, and Christopher Nolan.

Even though I do satirize the AFI a lot, I would like to take a moment to congratulate their members for finally including Back to the Future (1985) on one of their lists. It's about time that this masterpiece is recognized by these guys. Now if only we could get them to move it to number one on their list of the 100 greatest American movies.

You want a movie that's super metal? Look no further than Back to the Future. The time machine is built out of a Delorean, which is covered in stainless steel. Stainless steel has to be one of the coolest metals of all. In addition, Marty rides a skateboard with metal wheels. Which shoot sparks.

Metal!

\m/

Why my iPod has the ability to embarrass me so badly (and why I still won't delete the embarrassing songs)

2008-06-16T18:10:00.001-07:00

I got home from college for the summer and I rediscovered the joy of driving around town blasting music out of my car with the windows rolled down. I don't have a car at school, and I always forget how much better music sounds on the freeway. Or even just driving through a Wal-Mart parking lot. A lot of music is fun to blast out of my car, either because other people with similar tastes might hear it and acknowledge my total awesomeness somehow, or because it will totally piss of the squares and start a social revolution. The Rolling Stones fit into the former, the Dead Kennedys into the latter.

And then there's the music that I listen to in the car after I make sure to roll my windows up tightly. And even when the windows are rolled up, these songs cause me to still turn the stereo down when I pull up next to another car at a stoplight. It seems that when I play these on anything other than headphones, I constantly look around, waiting for judgmental stares and gapes of disbelief. I'm embarrassed by them, but do I still love them? Yes. Do I still drum on the steering wheel during the bridge? Yes. Do I still lip sync to the chorus when I think no one can see me? For sure. So, without further ado, I present the Top 10 songs that I am ashamed to love. (Click on the song title for a link to a YouTube video).

10. "Painkiller" by Judas Priest -- The title track from Priest's 1990 foray into Speed Metal, Painkiller is a deliciously bad metal song. Rob Halford's screeching vocals turn the track into a parody of metal--the kind of crap that Bill and Ted would headbang to. But it's so awesome to drive to. It makes you feel like even a mundane trip to return DVDs at Blockbuster is an epic quest.

9. "The Stroke" by Billy Squier -- The lyrics "Stroke Me/Stroke Me/Stroke!/Stroke!" should adequately explain why I don't want the people in the next car over to hear my stereo. It's also one of the catchiest songs I have ever heard. I have had that damn chorus stuck in my head for a week straight.

8. "Dig That Groove Baby" by The Toy Dolls -- I actually really respect this band, but this song sounds like the kind of music that an insane person on speed would listen to. "Digdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdig dig that groove BAYBEEE!"

7. "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry -- I've always thought that the backlash against Disco was unwarranted. A lot of Disco is actually just really good funk that happened to be popular during an unfortunate era in fashion. But still, Disco blasting out of my car in public? I'm not that geeky.

6. "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies -- Another band that I really resepect, but I don't exactly want strangers hearing me listen to an angry white guy scream, "I went to YOUR schools! I went to YOUR CHURCHES! I WENT TO YOUR INSTITUTIONAL LEARNING FACILITIES!"

5. "You Give Love a Bad Name" by Bon Jovi -- I have no defense for this one. I just really like the song. That probably means I have the same musical tastes as my 35 year-old dental hygienist. I really don't give a fuck at this point. (As long as no one hears this coming out of my car, that is.)

4. "The Gods Made Heavy Metal" by Manowar -- The song rules. The lyrics reveal that Manowar are polytheists who believe that higher beings gifted us with Heavy Metal. 'Nuff said.

3. "Heaven" by Warrant -- This is actually a very sensitive song about lead singer Jani Lane's passion for his beloved girlfriend. Unfortunately it will always be a power ballad from 1989 and will never be taken seriously by anyone.

2. "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" by the Offspring -- I really liked this song in middle school. You know what? I still do. (Please don't hurt me.)

1. "The Final Countdown" by Europe -- A kick-ass metal song that, like Priest's "Painkiller," makes everything seem epic. I hope to go out in a blaze of glory just like the end of Thelma & Louise (Grand Canyon and everything), with "The Final Countdown" playing on my stereo while I plunge into the depths of the earth.

That's pretty metal.

\m/

Why Japan is my Favorite Country, Part II

2008-06-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

Francis Ford Coppolla made three of the best films I have ever seen. “The Godfather” is a staggering accomplishment of cinema. “The Godfather: Part II” in my opinion surpasses the first. Watching Pacino deliver his performance as Michael Corleone in both films proves that the motion picture can in fact be a form of high art, and is not doomed to stay isolated in popular culture. “Apocalypse Now” makes a fantastic commentary on the horrors of war and portrays a country and a man’s psyche torn apart by the existential nature of violence. These are the films that I watch when I am in the mood to be challenged as a movie-goer.

Then there are the films that I watch while I check my email. Bloody movies are good email-checking movies. Sometimes I want to turn my brain off and cheer when zombies explode.

I have seen a lot of horrific things depicted on the screen and a lot of fake blood splashed on actors’ faces. At this point in my experience as a fan of film, it takes a lot of violence on screen for me to do anything but declare “meh” and take another sip of my beverage.

I don’t think I have ever said “meh” whilst watching a gore scene in a Japanese film.

Japan is in tune with the wonderful world of “Ultraviolence.” This word describes scenes are so horrifically gory that they deserve their own word. A swordfight is violent. A swordfight in which the villain is stabbed through the left nostril and the camera zooms in on the gushing blood is ultraviolent.

If a scene is ridiculously gory and over the top, I will usually cheer and throw up the metal horns while proclaiming, “METAL! That was SO metal!” (My neighbors probably think that I do a lot of welding or something.)

The most metal, violent, endorphin-releasing movie ever made in the history of humankind is a Japanese film titled “Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky” (sometimes just titled “The Story of Ricky”). The film depicts “Ricky,” a total bad-ass who is wrongly imprisoned and must battle the evil tyrants who rule the corrupt prison under an iron fist of fear. Ricky stands up for the little guy, protecting the weak and defending the cause of justice. And what better way to defend justice than by implementing ultraviolence? Ricky nobly crushes heads with his bare fists, punches an obese man so hard that his intestines fall out, and liquefies the evil, inexplicably shape-shifting prison warden in a giant meat grinder. Did I mention that he grinds up the evil warden’s whole body? Well, all except the head. He keeps that so that he can show it to his friends and declare that the evil rule over the prison has ended.

METAL! SO metal!

I love throwing up the metal horns during a movie, but sometimes a scene goes beyond heavy metal and is so unbelievably disturbing that I stand up from the couch and scream, “HOLY CHRIST!” while stuffing my fingers into my mouth. Only two films in the world have ever disturbed me so much that I had to put them on pause and get a drink of water. Both are Japanese. Actually, both were directed by a man named Takashi Miike. I don’t think he had a very normal childhood.

The first Miike film I saw was the 1999 release “Audition.” Basically, the film is a romantic comedy for the first 40 minutes as our protagonist, Shigeharu Aoyama, tries to find a date by sitting in on a movie audition and watching various women parade in front of him. He finally chooses to call one of them and set up a date. Unfortunately she turns out to be completely, totally, mind-numbingly insane. After the first 40 minutes, the movie suddenly becomes terrifying. We are privileged to scenes of the girl systematically torturing Aoyama on the floor of his house with disturbingly long needles inserted into really painful places. Like the tear ducts. Okay, I need a drink of water just thinking about that.

The second Miike film that I saw was a little gem called “Ichi the Killer,” which loosely fits into the Yakuza drama genre. Ichi is a hitman for a Yakuza gang who is both masochistic and sadistic--literally receiving sexual-like pleasure from acts of violence inflicted upon himself and others. Fun scenes in the film include Ichi cutting his own tongue in half (in a close-up) and a man being hung from the ceiling on giant hooks and having boiling oil poured over his back.

Horrible, horrible things to view. Yet . . . after I pause the movie, get a drink of water, and calm down, I kind of want to throw the horns up. And finish the film.

And then make my friends watch it so I can laugh at them standing up and screaming “HOLY CHRIST” while stuffing their fingers into their mouths.

Yeah, I’m pretty metal.

\m/

Why Japan is my Favorite Country, Part I

2008-06-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

No, it isn't because of Anime. I hate Anime. If you're looking for someone to write about how much they love "Avatar: The Last Airbender," then please wander over to the fanboy section of Internet where you can commune with people who have similar obsessions with horribly- proportioned eyes.

After expounding upon my love of Hair Metal in the previous post, I got in the mood to browse YouTube for clips of some of my favorite sleaze/glam/hard rock acts from the 1980s. As I perused clips of intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/solo/chorus, I quickly noticed that almost every single hair band ever had a good deal of concert footage that had been recorded in Japan. I seem to recall hearing at some point that Japan used to be crazy for Hair Metal, and it seems YouTube supports this assertion. The shots of the crowd show rabid fans, jumping all over each other and destroying their vocal chords in support of music. (Check out The Scorpions in Japan back in 1982.)

You may recall a scene from the 1984 mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap" in which guitarist Nigel Tufnel (portrayed brilliantly by Christopher Guest) proclaims to an ailing Spinal Tap that "'Sex Farm' is on the charts in Japan." Indeed, as a parody of the odd obsession, the film closes with a Spinal Tap concert in Japan, with fans pumping their fists obediently as Spinal Tap pours out a gnarly rendition of "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight." I think that only certain aspects of culture are well-known enough by the general public to be parodied, and the fact that Japan made it into "This is Spinal Tap" speaks to the pervasive nature of their obsession.

I have no idea why certain types of music have such an appeal for Japanese audiences, especially something as unique as Hair Metal, which makes no attempt whatsoever to appeal to their native culture. So, on my list of things that I love about Japanese culture, I have to fill the first slot with their completely eclectic and nonsensical taste in music.

During about the same time as the arrival of Hair Metal, Japan also fell in love with another genre of uniquely Western music: punk rock (albeit on a smaller scale). While punk probably never made it on a lot of mainstream Japanese radio stations, a lot of rock bands that I have heard from the region cite punk as an influence. I also know that there is a relatively large hardcore punk scene still alive there today. Noise/Doom/Experimental/Hardcore act BORIS are heavily influenced by punk groups and groups with similar musical sounds such as The Melvins. (If you haven't checked out BORIS, by the way, you're missing out on one of the most versatile rock bands in the history of the world.) I love the idea of a bunch of Japanese kids running around in leather motorcycle jackets screaming for anarchy and still destroying the United States in math and science scores.

One of my favorite musical genres, the doomed-to-obscurity brilliance of Psychobilly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychobilly), recently hit Japan, and after adding a few unique twists, they seem to have a budding scene on their hands. The self-proclaimed first Psychobilly band of Japan, Battle of Ninjamanz, recently came to notoriety by recording a split EP with danish Psychobilly legends Mad Sin. The lyrics of Battle of Ninjamanz songs might be in English--it's actually hard to tell from the vocal performance of lead singer Mutsumi--but the song titles include such classics as "I love Serial Killer" and "Rock 'n' Roll Rules OK!" Oh, and their most recent album was titled "Battle of Ninjamanz Vs. Dildos." I love these guys. http://www.ninjamanz.com/

Why Hair Metal totally, undeniably, and inexorably rocks

2008-06-09T19:02:00.000-07:00

I like my media like I like my coffee: straightforward. Nothing fancy. I don't want a bunch of hidden surprises like hazelnut or peppermint swimming around in my morning brew. And for the love of God, don't even think about freezing the stuff and shoving a straw through it. Good media, like good coffee, is created by a person who is level-headed and focused. They take pride in what they do, sure, but their confidence does not extend beyond delivering a basic, quality product.

Actually, that was a terrible analogy. At least for me. I hate coffee. I can't stand the stuff. I have no idea if hazelnut coffee tastes any better than regular coffee, but it sounded good as an opener.

What I said about good media being straightforward is true, though. My ultimate guilty pleasure is Hair Metal from the 1980s and early 1990s. The music is formulaic, chauvinistic, and far too commercialized. But you know what, bands like Warrant and Mötley Crüe (when in doubt, add umlauts) got together and said, 'we like women, money, and drug addictions.' So they wrote songs about those exact things, made them marketable, and made more money off of songs about sex than anyone ever should. Ever. (For a perfect example, check out this 1990 masterpiece.)

Hair metal knew what it was, and it didn't try to masquerade as anything else. It didn't pretend to be art, it just rocked. Listening to the incredibly overproduced guitar solos and soaring vocals now is a hell of a lot of fun, especially when you place them next to the pretentious Indy and Emo bands who are producing music that always has to mean something.

Just rock. Get on stage and detonate some fireworks on your audience. If you want to explain what a song is about before you play it, limit your explanation to one sentence. If it takes more than one sentence, then it's too complicated.

As I Lay Dying is a commercial musical group. They sell tons of merchandise at the mall. Yet they seem to perpetuate an idea of nonconformity in their attitude and appearance. They are trying to be more than they actually are, and that doesn't work. Plus, I've heard that they're Christian, and any true rock 'n' roll fan will tell you that not even Jesus himself wants to spoil good music with the teachings of Jesus.

My tastes in media tend to run towards the populist side, but this doesn't mean I'm a slave to whatever is popular. Nor does it mean that I can't appreciate a little elitist boasting every now and then. I actually sort of enjoy the fact that everyone hates Hair Metal with a passion nowadays. It used to be a populist expression, but the subsequent backlash has given the chauvinism and blatant sexuality a nice little elitist twist. For all of you "nonconformist" kids out there, think about the fact that when I blast Warrant really loud in public, I piss off a lot more people than anything that you bought at Hot Topic ever could.