Better check greektown

There was a headline this morning on AOL that read "Russian Troops Invade Georgia."

I wonder how many idiot Americans thought that the article was referring to the state of Georgia and not the country that broke off from The Soviet Union where the invasion actually took place. I bet all of those old people who built fallout shelters in their backyards during the cold war finally thought they would get to use them for something other than a room to store old paint cans.

Link to the article.

Naked Pictures of Chewbacca

I saw The Dark Knight the other day. It was fantastic, but that isn't what this entry is about. I purchased my Dark Knight IMAX tickets from Fandango.com. I thought I had heard the last of those Fandango.com people until today when I checked my email. Apparently they had taken it upon themselves to send me an email, asking how my "IMAX theater experience" went. Now, most people might be flattered by warmhearted inquiry such as this, but I most certainly am not.

The question I am asking myself is "why the hell do they care how my IMAX experience went?" How does one gauge what success is when it comes to seeing a movie? I saw the movie, and my pants didn't catch on fire, so I guess it must have been a "good" experience. Is there some sort of IMAX problem that the general population isn't aware about? Is one out of every five IMAX theater customers the victim of an Alligator attack? Perhaps three out of every five IMAX theater customers get sucked into a black hole that is conveniently placed beneath their seat by a rogue custodian. I probably would have opted for the black hole treatment over being forced to sit through Jim Carrey's abomination The Number 23, but that is beside the point.

The point is that this is a movie, not a rectal exam, therefore the condition of the theater and the overall "experience" is irrelevant. If the movie is good, I don't care if the floor is sticky, or if the dude next to me decides he wants to whip it out and start jacking off to a 30 second love scene. Sure, most movie theaters probably assemble their staffs from the lobotomy ward of whatever local nuthouse is within close proximity, but what is Fandango going to do to address concerns of that nature? The answer is they are probably going to do nothing. If I really had a complaint, I'd take it up with the owner of the theater, or the manager, not with the company I bought my damn tickets from. It would take an act of god for me to complain to a movie theater employee, which leads me to believe that based on this email, they must get a lot of complaints. Not that I am surprised, but if the end result of this is the fact that I have to sift through inane emails from every place I decide to spend a few bucks then maybe I should follow Marlon Brando's lead and buy a tropical island to spend most of my time at.

Oh he's harmless

This guy is my new hero. Apparently he showed up wearing this t-shirt to meet up with a fourteen year old girl he was trying to woo. I use the word woo in the most romantic way possible too. Here is the link to the story.

Now I know why Tigers eat their young

Nothing beats a good press release, because they usually come off sounding like the individual writing them has the intelligence quotient of a Toby Keith groupie. Normally these predatory hyperbolic advertising techniques are reserved for faceless corporations trying to sell inferior products, or labels like Victory Records who have to make up for the lack of talent their acts possess by assaulting consumers with banal ads. However, it appears that Epitaph Records just doesn't give a fuck anymore about having some kind of reasonable equilibrium between maintaining the dignity of the company, and cashing their chips in for a business model that embraces style over substance. I understand that it is the wave of the future, and in order to survive in 2008 every label I used to care about has to embrace mediocrity and appeal to the lowest common denominator. People have livelihoods and bills to pay, but that doesn't mean I still can't make fun of just how ridiculous this whole situation has become.

Lets get to the press release in question. Epitaph recently signed yet another musical version of an unanesthetized back-alley abortion. The band is called I Set My Friends On Fire and if people actually like this shit, then fine That isn't my issue. The issue is that some dong over at Epitaph actually had the balls to write the following passage regarding this bands so called "uniqueness."

The label promises that the debut "melds the band’s unique sense of humor (as evidence, simply read the song titles and lyrics) with an onslaught of thrash angular guitar riffs, pulsing dance beats, brutal breakdowns, sassy screams and lush melodic choruses. "

HOLD ON STOP RIGHT THERE
You mean to tell me that the selling point of this band is the fact that they wrote a few fucked up song titles?????? Ohhhhh, how unique, what a unique sense of humor. NOBODY HAS EVER DONE THAT IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC!!! Gee, wow, unique song titles! I think I just bricked a huge load in my pants because I'm so fucking excited about yet another band who took three measly minutes out of their day to come up with a bunch of random word associations. What a unique group of guys, copying one hundred other fucking bands who have done the same thing. I bet these guys are so unique that Stephen Hawking himself made his way down to the studio to record guest vocals, because his brilliant mind was so enamored by their uniqueness that it collapsed in on itself like a neutron star. The good people over at Epitaph Records must think we are a bunch of suckers.
This shit was "unique" when Dillinger Four did it, I dunno, over ten years ago. I wish this label would do what Nitro Records did. Find a fucking product like hot sauce or home pregnancy tests, fill the warehouse up, sell sell sell and don't look back.

I bit into the apple with the worm in it.

It's been a while since I've written in this thing. Not that anyone gives a flying shit, but I am going to start this blog back up again. With that said it is with great joy that I am able to express my frustration and utter confusion with Apple Computers.

A few months ago I decided that I was going to get "cosmopolitan" and purchase a Macbook. My PC was slowly beginning to function about as well as a Yugoslavian automobile so I made the decision to retire the old gal, my trusty Toshiba Satellite. A month beforehand I also purchased a new 80 Gig Ipod. To make a long story short, the day after I purchased my Macbook I had to take it back to the store because it wouldn't even turn on and my Ipod is now dead after 3 months. The Macbook was finally listed as "DOA" after the staff finally pulled their heads out of their asses (which prompted them to give me a new one, which I promptly turned down and got my money back, forcing me to order a used one from a private seller) and I haven't even brought the Ipod into the Mac store yet to utilize the warranty. Aside from my frustration about their awful customer service and less than stellar products I noticed a few things while I was in the Mac store waiting for this problem to get solved.

On the day I brought my "DOA" macbook back into the Mac Store in Ardmore PA I spent close to two hours there while they jerked me around. I noticed a few different kinds of people.

1. The XXXXtreme Window Shoppers.

These people weren't there just to glance at a few items and leave, they were there to walk around and hang out like they were in a fucking coffee shop. There were a few people who were in the Mac Store for the ENTIRE time I was struggling with the customer service. These people would poke around, look at things, and giggle like they were in some sort of futuristic, magical, Logan's Run-esque fantasy land. By the looks on their faces, one could have made the assumption that they were looking at a towering homerun, or even a priceless work of art, but no, they were looking at a bunch of SHIT they could have stayed at home to look at!. It wasn't enough for these vapid, soulless slack-jawed yokels to just look either, they had to touch and fuck around with every single piece of merchandise in the entire store, 5 times over. This experience has me convinced that if Apple started charging admission to enter Mac stores there would be more than enough assholes who would gladly pay it and then brag to all of their friends, like they had just spent a day at Magic Mountain. These are the types of people who would leave their infant locked in a car on a hot summer day with the windows up just so they could wait in line for 5 hours to buy the new Iphone.

2. Gotta bro down with the mac employees dudes, dudes

Now, these people wouldn't stay for hours, but they would bug the living fuck out of the employees with their banal anecdotes and retarded questions. It's no fucking suprise that the customer service sucks so bad, because these idiots come into the store and their idiocy becomes contagious. It sucks the life out of these fine employees. For some reason, as soon as people walk into the Mac Store, they automatically think that due to their undying love for mac products, they share some kind of half-assed kindred spirit with everyone who works in the mac store. Sorry guy, but I don't think Molly and Carl over at the IPOD learning center want to talk to you about how when you go on trips you take pictures of your IPOD in front of famous monuments. These people are college students trying to make money for beer and cocaine, not psychologists who are there to offer you peace of mind in your all to often moments of blind consumerism. To these individuals the chain of command goes as follows.
-Mac Store employee
- God
- The Incredible Hulk

3. The "i'm too dumb to fix it on my own at home" guy

These guys aren't nearly as bad, and I speak from experience because I can't fix every single problem that comes along with my computer either. However there is a difference between coming into the store with a legitimate problem, and dragging along your entire G5 just because you want to look cool in front of everyone while you get the latest version of some program installed. Also, these Mac store employee's aren't supermen, they aren't going to fix all of your problems for you. These customers swagger into the store, frantically fumbling about with their computers like they've never turned the damn things on in their lives and then they sit in awe as their computers are getting worked on like they just got laid for the first time. I was prepared to hear the following exchange of words and it would not surprise me if this sort of thing is a regular occurrence.

"I took this everywhere but nobody could fix it, can you fix it mr mac mechanic?????"
"Um, sir, this is a muffler"
"I DON'T CARE JUST FIX IT!!!"

When I bring my Ipod in this week to get it replaced I am hoping the place will be empty, but unfortunately there is no way in hell that will ever be the case.

Dickety??? Highly Dubious!

After taking my daily run through Pastepunk I just had to comment on something.

The long-awaited INKED IN BLOOD album Sometimes We Are Beautiful is on its way and heralding the band's most recent and most ambitious effort to date is the song "Angel Of Lost Hopes" now playing on myspace.com/inkedinblood. Says Trump of the new album “We were really inspired by FURTHER SEEMS FOREVER for much of the songwriting on this record.” The hooks are founded on addictive melodies and sing-able choruses; in fact the entire album is rooted firmly in the tradition of ‘evolving hardcore’ where the energy, intelligence and beauty of a band’s sound reflect the current state of the scene. According to Trump “from the sound of Sometimes We Are Beautiful we are entering the next level of impacting others with heavy music.”

Press releases usually make me laugh but this one in particular has a high level of LOL-itude. What I'm doing is in no way original because Pastepunk's very own Jordan Baker already elaborated on this earlier, but something occured to me that I just had to share. This press release comes via the fine people at Facedown Records who for all intents and purposes have a zero percent track record of putting out material that is listenable (aside from one Comeback Kid album). The claims they are making about how Inked In Blood are pioneers in some kind of "nu" level of hardcore evolution is downright nauseating. I recognize that most independent labels are in the business of hyperbole but this is a label that has no business making these kinds of claims and after listening to this band you'll know what I am talking about.

There has only been one hardcore band in history to make a lofty claim of this nature and actually have the talent to back it up. You may have heard of these guys.

What makes you think this Darryl Strawberry character is better than you?

As a Red Sox fan I know better than to complain about the media coverage my beloved team gets but after seeing the lack of coverage ESPN gave last nights game, something just didn't seem right. Kason Gabbard pitched a complete game shutout yesterday and there wasn't even a clip of it on the online highlight reel. There are two things that make this a much bigger deal than The Yankees "a team who is only two games over 500" winning their game last night, which was featured as the top baseball highlight.

1. Kason Gabbard is an unknown call up from AAA who has been pitching while Curt Schilling has been on the DL for the 999th time in his career.

2. It's a fucking complete game shutout.

Anyone following baseball these days should know that complete games and shutouts are pretty rare. More reliance on the "bullpen" has made the both of them pretty rare as well as the overall lack of pitching ability that has been prevalant over the past ten years in major league baseball. I will admit that the pitching this year has yielded some of the best performances in recent memory, however, most pitchers don't get to pitch more than six innings if they're lucky these days.

I know that The Red Sox get coverage to the point that it makes other baseball fans sick to their stomachs and unfortunately that is an aspect of the sports media I have no control over. I just wish they would cover the important shit going on with my team and when they aren't, they should be covering all the other important shit that doesn't have to do with either The Red Sox or The Yankees. This was an important event that got largely ignored simply because it wasn't about David Ortiz saying something silly in broken english, and that's just total bullshit.

Disco Stu should have Disco Ducked!

Generally I take the good people over at Pitchfork with a grain of salt, but not today. While I'm way too young to remember the short lived, and highly unnecessary "disco era" of our fine country I know enough about it to know how super lame it was. Pitchfork staff writer Stephen M. Deusner (probably pronounced dooze-nur, though I'm sure he tells people that the D is silent just to be pretentious) thinks otherwise about the disco-era and he discusses this in his review for The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Apparently it was just re-released, which was why the review ran in the first place. If this guy likes disco, that is ultimately his problem, but one of the main themes throughout his review is the idea that Saturday Night Fever turned disco from an edgy, underground kind of music, into a watered down, cheesy shadow of it's former self.

First of all, when the fuck has disco ever been edgy music???? Seriously???? Think about the musicians making music before disco even became semi-popular. I think it is safe to say that people like Jimi Hendrix and bands like The Beatles were way more edgy in their time than disco ever was. If anything, 70's dance music was a more mainstream, clean-cut "guilded" reaction to the dreary rock n roll scene that was evolving into something not as family friendly. Sure, when disco reached the heigth of its popularity it was largely associated with doing huge lines of blow off peoples cocks and shit like that but much of the music itself was still pretty friendly. If disco from the early 70's is what this reviewer considers to be be "edgy" then his homelife growing up was probably the spitting image of how Ned Flanders and his family are portrayed on The Simpsons only with more church and a few frontal lobotomys.

Lets compare two Bee Gee's songs, one from 1975 which was before Saturday Night Fever was released, and one from 1977 which is the year Saturday Night Fever was released. I'm going to compare the lyrical content, because if the "pre-Saturday Night Fever disco-era" was supposedly "edgy" then I'm sure Barry Gibb and company were expressing some really outlandish disco style thoughts.

The Bee Gee's "Jive Talkin" 1975
Its just your jive talkin
Youre telling me lies, yeah
Jive talkin
You wear a disguise
Jive talkin
So misunderstood, yeah
Jive talkin
You really no good

The Bee Gee's "Night Fever" 1977 Post Saturday Night Fever Era
And that sweet city woman,
She moves through the light,
Controlling my mind and my soul.
When you reach out for me
Yeah, and the feelin is bright,

Then I get night fever, night fever.
We know how to do it.
Gimme that night fever, night fever.
We know how to show it.

Ya, thats some captivating shit right there. They both sound pretty banal to me, though I'm sure the first song was somehow a metaphor criticizing The Nixon Administration's foreign policy tactics. Did the reviewer of this album even stop to think about how disco is pretty much a drop in the bucket on the musical timeline? Disco was super popular for about 3 WHOLE YEARS, not because people got tired of it, but because they realized how fucking lame it was! Disco got dropped quicker than the recipient of a Dale Hunter crosscheck so lets not go into some kind of quasi-intellectual debate on how "ohhh disco was once this untouched, pure, gemstone......UNTIL IT BECAME MAINSTREAM." Dance music has always been mainstream. Disco was just a subgenre of it that got extremely over the top and that is what it was meant for. There was never integrity in disco music. The only good thing that came out of disco aside from it completely imploding was the fact that people like Michael Jackson looked at it afterwards and thought "shit, disco could have been cool if it wasn't so fucking thoughtless and stupid, I'm going to fix it."