Marvel Sucker - HI63 - SpiderGate

Another comic vid ;p




jej

Amazing Vlog Show - Rest of Week One

Here's StJude's Wednesday...




...and EssDeeSee's Thursday...




...and WickTV's Friday...




...and Mr Saturday's Saturday!


I may keep posting my own vids on here, but to follow all the vlogging adventures, and to join in on message board chatting, check it all out at youtube.com/amazingvlogshow

Cheers,

jej

AOTW - By The Fireside, Nick Cave, Willy Mason, Battles

By The Fireside - The Great Hartford Fire has a very Midlake/Neil Young vibe to it, but maybe a littlr more rocky in some places, and moody in others. It's the debut feature length for Daniel Lea. This guy does it on his own. It's a themed album, based on The Great Hartford Fire of July 1944, when a circus came to Hartford, Conneticut, and caught alight. It's got a really different, original feel to it, and it's the sort of album that I can't turn off half way through. It also has great album artwork. Baggas wrote this blog recently about the advantages of buying music over stealing it, and while I realise it's not important to some people, I like having liner notes, and artwork, and lyrics. I think in some cases it adds signifcantly to what the musician is trying to get across; what kind of vibe. Anyhow, here is the video for the first track:




I really dig Willy Mason, and he released an album last year that I somehow missed, If The Ocean Gets Rough, so I grabbed it when I saw it the other day. It took me a little while to get into, but my expectations were pretty high. He writes some songs that just sound like they've always been written. The album didn't start like that, but eventually there are some golden lyrics that really stand out. So simple but really dead on. Here's a video from his House Party Tour, playing a song from this album:


Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sounds a lot like his last project/release Grinderman. It has it's mellow moments, but he's still got that grungy rock thing going. It's really great. As usual, the lyrics are also fantastic. I've only given it a few listens, so I haven't picked up om everything properly yet, but I like how the title track (below) mixes the biblical story of Lazarus being raised from the dead with contemporary times: but what do we reakky know of the dead and who actually cares? I don't know what it is but there is definitely something going on upstairs


Lastly, Battles - Mirrored. I saw thse guys at the Big Day Out this year and they were incredible. I like how what they are doing is actually really simple, mathematical, but it sounds fantastic and would be incredibly hard to play and play well together. It's just a bunch of musical patterns and riffs that lock in together. They're a bit of a superstar group too. John Stanier (Mark Of Cain)on drums and a bunch of other dudes who've played with Patton on different projects, and everyone else. They're all famous and know how to play their instruments really well, but it never turns into wanky guitar shred or anything. It's interesting and catchy and rocky at the same time. Here's a video:

jej

Tuesday 1 - Cluedo

The beautiful Mrs Internet's first vlog :D




jej

Monday 1 - The Beginning

The first week of vlogging begins. I'll post the first week of vids here, but after that you'll have to check them out at youtube.com/amazingvlogshow if you want to continue to join us for a vlogging good time.




jej

The Monthly

I try to read the newspaper regularly, at least weekly, and watch late night news, to kind of make sure that I'm not a complete ignoramus when it comes to what is going on in the universe around me. The only thing deterring me from reading the paper more is time. I spend most of my weekend at work or out, and newspapers are not conjusive to bus travel, but magazines are perfect.

One of my tutors put me, and our whole class, onto The Monthly, an Australian magazine with the subheading Australian Politics, Society & Culture. It kind of reads like a classy Reader's Digest. The longer articles are under the heading 'Essays' and come complete with bibliographies that are available on their website. This is good news for me, as I plan on using some of the things I've read in future assignments for uni.

So where am I going with this post, other than plugging this magazine? Well, I regularly read a couple of geeky comic book magazines, and the triple j music mag, and every time I open the pages of these publications I want to know the information inside, but I sometimes despise the way that it is presented. Comic magazines not so much, because their target audience is probably quite a bit younger than me and it kind of makes sense that it would be written at least a little 'duh' ish, but triple j has this 'alternative' kind of reputation that isn't being pushed to my liking in it's printed form. Not so much in it's audio or TV form either, but that's for another post I think.

My point is, I'm sick of reading magazines that make things too basic for me. Everything is bite sized and simple and boring and forgettable. I know I'm talking about magazines, and maybe I shouldn't be expecting something incredibly deep from them, but why does it have to be so simple? So, it was nice to pick up a magazine that was interesting, and current, and expected more of me as a reader. I say check The Monthly out. I read it, cover to cover. They also have great free video and audio interviews and discussions on their website slowtv.com.au

jej

Marvel Sucker - HI62

Comics and a couple of animated DVDs. I'll write a post that isn't a video...any day now.





jej

The Amazing Vlog Show - Starts Monday!

It begins...




jej

The Punisher (1989) - Moofie Squad

Excitement! Avert your eyes, children!




jej

The Dangers Of Hotlinking

I feel like I'm cheating a little just posting something that I didn't write because I find it interesting or amusing, so I'll add a little something to it. Promise.

This is from a post entitled 'Why Haters Shouldn't Hotlink Images'.

So a friend of mine was running through his Apache logs earlier and saw somebody hotlinking some of his pictures, so he decided to check it out. Turns out it's a skinhead website at skinheads.net. It's just a simple forum post, however it's still enough to mess with them a little bit!Here is a picture of the original post before my friend messed with them:

I told him to throw some gay porn or something on there, but he decided to go with a little less nudity, and something a little more offensive (to them):

I'm not sure how long until they find out and delete the post, but in the mean time you can try to view the original thread here.

Great story. Well told.

It reminded me of something that happened where I used to work, which shall remain nameless for fear of getting anyone into trouble. There is probably zero chance of that happening, but I'll play it safe anyway.

At work Mister X hired someone to design a logo for his company, I think it was a plumbing company. After it was done, the logo was put up on the company's website. A few weeks later Mister X alerted us to the fact that another plumbing company website with the same name as Mister X's was using the logo that he had paid for. The best part is that it was hotlinked, so, to mess with dodgy copying plumbing company, some clever brains at work made a nice dodgy looking porn flavoured logo and now, as far as I know, dodgy plumbing company has that on their site. The only downer is that the dodgy company turned out to be some kind of spam crap and not a company at all.

SeeTHAT was a good story, told not so well.

jej

Moofies - Bee Movie, The Brave One, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Hot Fuzz

Last night Noelene and I did the 'lie on the couch and watch a bunch of completely unrelated movies in a row' thing. This used to be a big past time of mine, but I haven't done it in I don't know how long. I remember riding home from the video shop as a kid, against gushing winds, with a bag overfilled with video tapes on each handlebar. Wacky.

Anyway, Bee Movie must have cost a ton, just to pay the all star cast. The animation is really slick, but to be honest, what 3D animated toon isn't nowadays. The standard is high, but you have to make something pretty far below par for anyone to notice.

This starts like any other animated movie about insects. A whole lot of Bee puns and a look at their society. The difference is when you see them in the human world. They've used some really clever POV techniques which I haven't seen in any other insectoid toon movies. Barry, the star played by Jerry Seinfeld, gets stuck to a tennis ball while in play, gets sucked through a car engine, etc. It's pretty entertaining on an aesthetic level, and I laughed a few times. I think Seinfeld's writing peeps through occasionally in some kind of left of centre jokes, which is great.

The only problem I have with this movie, and it's on a purely interprative level, is that the moral of the story appears to be 'just be a pleb and do what your told and enjoy it, because that's what's best for everyone'. It starts of as a 'even the little guy can change things' story, but his changes end up in disaster and he has to reverse them and get things back to status quo. It left me feeling a little odd about the whole thing, but it made me laugh and it wasn't overly quirky or annoying.

The Brave One is the latest Neil Jordan film. Jodie Foster plays a talk radio DJ, and her fiance is Naveem whatsisface from lost. After showing us how totally in love they are, we see the both of them get brutally beaten up by some thugs. Naveem dies, Foster survives. She ends up buying a gun and becoming a vigilante, killing those who she feels deserve to die. It's not the worst premise I've ever seen, and for the most part this film works. It's the third act that lets it down so much. She starts spouting action hero lines when she's killing people, like, 'who's the bitch now?'. The whole idea of realism is thrown out the window, and the ending is just ludicrous. It's a shame, because this could have been pretty decent. Foster can act, and Terence Howard is a likeable actor. I'm looking forward to seeing him in Iron Man. Anyway, if you don't mind being let down by the end, this was semi-interesting.

Me and You and Everyone We Know almost comes off as try hard, but I liked it. Imagine a Larry Clark movie, but a little less hard core and a lot more feel good, and that's what this is. It's rated R for high level themes, and there is a lot of sexual content in speech, but I think the fact that it's just talked about and nothing actually happens means that it can keep it's innocent feel. Almost sucked, but it's nice. It's my kind of feel good movie. Not too sappy and not too quirky. (trailer below). Great soundtrack too by Michael Andrews (Donnie Darko).






Lastly, Hot Fuzz. I haven't seen this in a while, and it's just golden. Both this and Shaun of the Dead are so easy to watch and re-watch. Tons of great cameos by funny British actors, and a bunch of in jokes. If you haven't seen this, go grab it. Now. Go on.

jej

The Piracy Mix - Volume 8 March 2008

Another mix....

1 - The Yardbirds - Boom Boom
2 - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig
3 - Modest Mouse - Little Motel
4 - Kate Nash - Foundations
5 - Kanye West - Can't Tell Me Nothing
6 - Public Enemy - 911 is a joke
7 - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Love Burns
8 - Chris Walla - The Score
9 - Burial - Archangel
10 - By The Fireside
11 - Cat Power - New York
12 - The Editors - An end has a start
13 - Motion City Soundtrack - Everything Is Alright
14 - Liars - Houseclouds
15 - Battles - Tonto
16 - Mogwai - Glasgow Metal Snake
17 - Radarmaker - Stop Being A Wanker
18 - The Cramps - I was a teenage werewolf
19 - STP - Hey Bastard
20 - DJ Faust - Return of the DJ
21 - Tok - Carry Feelings

...and that's it.

jej

Marvel Sucker - HI60

Secret Invasion has begun!!!! Also, I talk about Young X-Men, Omega The Unknown, and the new series of American Splendor.




jej

Scrabble Challenge - Round 11

A great round. Super exciting game took us just over an hour to finish.

I was way behind for the most part, while Noelene soared ahead, 129 to a measly 12. Then I came back with RESEMBLE, using all my letters for the bonus, and started to catch up. It was super close, and the letters were almost all gone, but Noelene jumped ahead right at the end for a finish of 288, beating my 266.

So that's 6 rounds to me and 5 to Noelene!

Excitement!

jej

Gary Busey Dog Crack

Busey is pretty awesome, and the answer to this question he was asked just made him more awesome:

What was the freakiest thing you ever snorted blow off of when you were a prominent coke fiend?

"I came home one day, took off my windbreaker, and three bindles of cocaine fell to the floor. Well, my dog, Chili, who has short hair, came in and laid on her back with her legs in the air, and she rubbed all my cocaine on her back and side. I yelled, "No, Chili! No" So I got a straw, and I started brushing her hair and snorting where I saw cocaine. Back, butt, side -- not a spot was left. It took me 25 minutes to snort all the cocaine the dog had on her coat. The fringe benefits of this were that the fleas, the dog hair, the mud, and the sweat went in my nose, too. It's not a good flavor coming off the dog."

Told ya.

jej

We Can Stop The Hurt!

The internet is a wonderful way of bringing people together to stop the oppression of innocents. Here is your oppurtunity to help stop Uwe Boll from making movies :D

Uwe Boll, the German director behind such horrid video game adaptations as House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Dungeon Siege and Postal, has recently admitted that he would retire from making movies if enough people want him to stop. When FearNet mentioned to Boll a petition online signed by 18,000 people requesting that he cease making films, Boll responded that “18,000 is not enough to convince me.” So how much would be enough? Indeed, now we have a goal. All we need is 980,000 more signatures on this petition and we can rid the world of future Boll-directed/produced cinematic atrocities. as my friend Scott Weinberg on Cinematical points out, Tunnel Rats, Far Cry, Zombie Massacre and BloodRayne 3 are already in production. So we might not be able to stop those productions. Be we just might have the ability to prevent a BloodRayne 4 or House of the Dead 3. So sign now!

That comes thanks to the good folks at digg.com I've signed the petition and so can you! Stop the production of unwatchable films based on video games!

Sign the petition now!

jej

Moofies - Sleepaway Camp

You know how sometimes you come across a cult movie that you somehow missed? Well, thanks to StJude of youtube I heard about Sleepaway Camp, aka Nightmare Vacation. Also, thanks to youtube, I saw the best ending of a film I've seen in ages. This drew me to want to see the whole thing, which is available here. I'm totally hunting down the whole series on DVD now.

It walks that fine line between being really culty undergroundy and interesting, to being creepy, to being completely ignorant, to being unwatchable, etc. It just works for some strange, undefinable reason, and I realy dug it. If you can appreciate Friday the 13th movies then you should be fine, but this had a different vibe to those. Especially the end. I don't even want to tell you what it is, because to describe it would ruin the magic ;p.

If you have any inclination to see this, just trust me and go for it before ruining the ending. This is one of the coolest twist endings ever, and where it cuts off is just brutally chilling and eeewwww.

The writer/director Robert Hiltzik has only made Sleepaway Camp movies. I LOVE that! It reminds me of Phillip Rhee. He's in the first two Best of the Best with actual movie stars, and then directs and stars in the two sequels, because who the hell else would hire him. He directs himself flirting with Gina Gershon. Pretty golden.

So anyways, here is a crappy trailer for Sleepaway Camp, which I totally dig for some reason.




jej

Marvel Sucker - HI59 - Silence

2 weeks catch up, in silence




jej

Moving, and the Pleasure of Possessions

Some of you know we've been trying to sell our unit in Safety Bay for almost a year. A couple of almost sales fell through, so we've decided to rent it out to a propsective buyer. We moved to a rental Applecross (a suburb that is much closer to work, uni, the comic shop :P) about 6 months ago been paying for both. Now we won't have to do that anymore.

When we moved here we just took up a few pieces of old furniture and all the must-have stuff. Everything else stayed at Safety Bay. Now that someone else is going to live there it became necessary to have all our stuff at this house, and now that we've done it I kind of wish we had done it when we first moved here. It's been a fun 6 months so far. The area is really nice and there's a bunch of cool places to eat around, but it hasn't felt completely like home until now. Now that we are surrounded by our stuff.

I know stuff is not actually important. If the house burned down (and I hope that it doesn't) it would be a little sad, but mostly because of the irreplacables like photos and diaries. Everything else isn't that big a deal, but it is totally making a difference on how at home we feel. Just having all this familiar stuff around makes it feel like home. I didn't realise that it had so much effect on our emotions until we moved it here. It's been like, 'Oh, THAT'S what's been missing from this place. That vibe'.

That's it really. Just a thought about material possessions.

jej

The other Wii

Don't you hate it when those pesky cats pop up out of the toilet bowl? Haven't you always wanted to virtually urinate on them? Well, now you can, thanks to Super Pii Pii Brothers on the Wii. ThinkGeek.com says "According to the Japanese text on the box "Super Pii Pii Brothers promotes good bathroom skills and allows women to experience for the first time the pleasure of urinating while standing."





You know you want to play this.

Thanks Tony ;)

jej