Print is dead, long live other formats

Analogue have news

I've had the pleasure of writing for them and also meeting some of the crew and they're a cool bunch. Here's hoping it flourishes online. Raise your glass to Analogue, everyone.

How to give a dignified, witty, smart, touching and typically Sean Penn acceptance speech.

Series of fuzz #13: Mazes and PENS

Listening to the 'friends' of bands you like on myspace can be a tough swamp to navigate but when you are the cap'n of an airboat as canny as I am, it can turn up some mighty fine results with a real tang.
First up are Mazes, UK fuzz-pop with an unknown amount of members. Check the myspace for a quick idea of what they're about and see the track below along with another. Kinda Weezer-ish and thoroughly wonderful.
Second up are PENS, again a UK act, a trio of girls and some really badly recorded songs on their myspace hence I'm really liking them.
I'd venture that the third track on their page was recorded inside a wet mattress with one of the Vivian Girls having sex with a broken amp on top of it. In a vat of honey. Underwater.

Mazes - Bowie Knife

PENS - Networking

Both mp3s gotten from catbirdseat

I 'urt my h-elbow

Stuff:

Having received Fifa 07 for my PSP for Xmas (a clever financial move from my other half meaning I also got Tiger Woods 07) my hands were beginning to seize up and my elbow cracked with every corner kicked, every tap-in netted, every pass completed. I have spent the last while managing Barnsley, you see, and they (i.e. I) just ain't good enough.
Luckily, with the internet at my fingertips I could scour the cyberworld seeking out underhanded ways in which I could allow my team an advantage.
And soon there it was: Pass to goalkeeper,Run to the D,Kick fullpower and the striker will snaffle it and enter into a one-on-one with the 'keeper.
Oh mighty Barnsley's luck changed and soon we were in the playoffs.
But they just couldn't beat Cardiff and then the fucking PSP packed up.
I'm sorry lads.

Music:

There has been alot of noisy music around, hasn't there? Isn't it great? While Crystal Stilts had a few hiccups at their recent gig, Wavves rocked it hard not so long ago and of course the blogs are all in a frenzy over 'noise' bands and retro-shoegaze bands and so on.
One of the standouts from this gaggle (or should that be gaggggggle?) is LA's Dum Dum Girls, which is one librarian called Dee Dee. Here's a lowest of the lo-fi example of her tuneage.

Hey Sis - Dum Dum Girls

You also may have heard the one-man band Blank Dogs being namechecked by many of these noisy acts like Crystal Stilts or Vivian Girls. Blank Dogs are/is certainly not for everyone so here is a decent example of what to expect.

Blank Dogs - Ants

Blank Dogs - Three Window Room

Other:

Want a laugh? Follow outrageously pretentious friend of Bono/Barry Egan, Gavin Friday on Twitter.

Also, follow porn legend Joanna Angel and get an insight to what people who get banged for a living think on a daily basis.

EDIT: How the FUCK did I get that Yahoo Media Player to work on my page?? I don't know but expect alot more music from now on. Class.

EDIT 2: Just realised linking to a pornstar's Twitter could end up skewing my 'visitor' stats. Could be as interesting as the time I used the terms 'Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion' and 'rapidshare' in the same post...

Twatter

Ever sent a text to a mate and thought to yourself:
'Man, I wish I had sent that to everyone so they could laugh at how fucking funny I am'?
Well, that's what Twitter has the potential to be. Whether it fulfils that potential or not is another issue altogther.
Follow me, my children.

Telepathe: The drug of the nation

Wavves gig was great last night, although it made me wish I was 10 years younger and had a fringe/mullet.
Will have a review up on The 'D soon but, for the moment, those beautiful Brooklynite synth sirens, Telepathe, have kindly returned my Q & A so go check that out

EDIT: Wavves live review from Whelans

Icy you

In an ideal world, this is how I would traverse the ice

There's usually nothing quite as embarrassing as slipping on an icy path and landing on your arse.
On the way to the shop, I did just that the other day and my ever-sympathetic other half proceeded to cry, nay deteriorate into a blob of teary goo, laughing at me as I did the whole 'I am slipping...oh I think I have rescued myself from it...uh oh I'm slipping more...splat. Ow my arsebone' thing.
But it doesn't end yet and in I went to the local Tesco to get some crap.
The still-laughing ladyfriend waited outside with the dog, whose usual habit is to hold off until at least three or four people are exiting, his cue to defecate with gleeful abandon under the blinding fluorescent lights, watched by the smiling security guard, right at the entrance.
The smiling security guard becomes the 'for fuck saking' security guard.
Anyway, once out of the queue, I realised that all was not yet right.
Through the window, chortling-hysterically lady had been watching me in the queue with a little girl standing behind me staring intently at my arse.
Pervy, eh?
Nope.
She had looked bemused, disgusted, amused and disgusted again, I have been reliably informed. The reason, it turns out, was that my fall had not just almost shattered my spine from the arsebone up, it had left a sizeable wedge of dogshit pressed firmly into my jeans. Delicious.
See you at Wavves tomorrow.

What's not to love?

`

Also, check out this groovy piece on Gang Gang Dance over on Plan B

Tallaghtfornia can be beautiful too...

Some young 'un has scrawled 'Asshole' into that menu board in a moment of simplistic, improvised brilliance.


The bus never came for this poor soul. He constructed a snowball and fucked it at a car moments later



A tree. Just that.

Bradjamin Boreton

'Hi, I'm Tom Jism, a former banker. This is my version of a bailout. I'm going to bail my brains out of my head. I watched Benjamin Button too and that certainly couldn't convince me not to liberate my afore-mentioned brains from their skullish prison. Ciao.'

Maybe that is too laborious a title for this post about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but anyway.
As you probably already know the film is based, albeit very loosely, around a story by F.Scott Fitzgerald (he of The Great Gatsby fame) and involves the tale of a child who is born into an old man's body and ages backwards, eventually becoming a senile man in an infant's body.
David Fincher (director of several works of sheer, unbridled genius not least amongst them being Zodiac)is behind the camera here and it has been said - somewhat cynically and yet plausibly - that this is his bid for an Oscar.
Brad Pitt, a frustratingly talented actor who can be as good as he is bland, plays the eponymous Button and how he got an Oscar nod is beyond me.
This is easily the most 'nothing' film I have seen in ages.
Of course it looks gorgeous, dreamy, hazy, and it is awash with that almost tangible sepia hue of the fantastic Lemony Snicket film. But nothing happens. Less than nothing.
Once the novelty of the special effects wears off, you are left with a rubbish love story that spans an entire life, between Cate Blanchett's character, Daisy - a moody, drawling dancer who manages to make Blanchett look bad - and Benjamin the Dullard.
That's right: this film put me off Cate Blanchett.
Confound you, Ben Button.
At any rate, what follows after laughing at the special effects for the first 20 minutes (Brad's head on an old midget's body - hilarious) is a series of elongated scenes where Benjamin stares blankly at people, speaking in a sloowwww accenttttt thattttt drrrrraggs everythinnnnggg outttt and doing bugger all.
At one stage Daisy and Benjamin meet when they are roughly the same age and...blah blah blah, who really cares.
This is stupifyingly dull.
What is the point of it? And it got how many Oscar noms? Actually, that shouldn't surprise me given the Academy's track record. Christ.
I have to stress that this is not a film with enough conviction to actively hate it, it's just a perplexing oddity, a whimsical glass of water, a cinematic 'nowt'.
There is nothing here that is nearly as profound as it thinks it is and the Forrest Gump comparisons are extremely apt. Don't bother with it. If someone does a rap version of the whole film in six minutes on youtube, a la that Predator rap from ages ago, then watch that.

Not very Christian behaviour at all, eh?

So, Christian Bale was recorded going mental at the Director of Photography, Shane Hurlbut, on the set of Terminator Salvation after the vastly experienced DP walked across The Baaaatmaaaaan's eyeline during an emotional scene.
A mistake was made but holy shit Bale goes off on one like a foul-mouthed toddler.
I love Bale's films and I'm sure many actors and actresses go as crackers as this but we usually don't get to hear it.
What a dick. He's still great though. But a dick in this situation.
Perez Hilton has the clip
Check it out

Attack of my clone

I have been informed - thanks to Godsend being on the TV - that if I died, my girlfriend would clone me.
Not just clone me.
Splice me with a helper monkey, apparently.
All the advantages of me, with the added bonus of obedience and a willingness to be at beck-and-call 24-hours a day.
A little like Mojo, pictured above with Homer.
Can't argue with that really.