Mondays, Doom and Madmen

Faced with an interesting feeling today – a sense that I have got too many irons in the fire right now and have to decide what to do with them.

Listened to the pod cast – weird feeling and oh god do I hate my voice sometimes but they only did one song – the Waltz is going to be on vacation in a couple of weeks and I understand the second song will be broadcast them.

Anyway listening to this made my wonder about doing my own show of some sort. Truth be told when I was younger I fantasized from time to time about being a DJ – back in the days when they played records on the radio – and not just any DJ the late night DJ – the guy in the late dark hours of the morning who managed to put the right song on the air as you were driving home at 3 am – that guy – the guy that Bruce Springsteen sang about in his album Nebraska.

Radio can be a very personal medium and that link between a dj and the folks out there can be pretty strong – even though you never really meet – but I remember for me it was a link, being stuck in you must conform suburbia, a link to a larger world.

Of course that wasn’t what I want to do now – although I suspect for the right money I would consider it. What I started kicking around was the idea of doing a pod cast show about bad movies – but we’re going to have put that idea up on the shelf for a bit for a few reasons.

1) we need to put together a press kit – the band’s getting out of its training wheel stage and if we want to do bigger venues we are going to have to a) promote ourselves better and b) present ourselves to the bookers as being a professional act that they can deal with.

2) We need to get the book and the lyrics and the music of the killer sheep musical set so that we can workshop the whole thing and start the process of getting it ready to pitch.

3) We need to convince our producer to let the damn tapes go and give us at least a rough cut of the damn album. The thing is now – with the big band – we won’t sound like the album – which means – well who knows – at least I want to hear the damn album – I like the guy and I know he wants it right but at least a track or two yes?

4) Once we get the album we’ll have to get the reproduced – and work on the design and all that.

5) We need to get the standard promotional items together – t-shirts, more buttons, stickers who knows maybe key chains

6) We need to book some more places and look into playing Philly or Boston.

So with all that on the plate – to do a weekly radio pod-cast is going to have to wait – I’ll do it but it’s not the first time I’m doing today or even this week.

At some point I’d like to do a pod cast or two about bad movies more as a pilot and less of a regular weekly thing just to see if the format could work. The Enemy Below has some pretty sophisticated equipment on his computer that we can use – which actually would work for the better – not having the pressure of a weekly show we can experiment and see just what works and doesn’t. More details on this later.

Speaking of bad movies – at the Enemy Below’s suggestion (he actually said “here you’ll hate this, it’s awful) I watched Doom last night the adaptation of the video game staring The Rock and some other people.

First the good points - the special effects were well done – there was a lot of love and care in making the monsters in Doom Come to life (I’ll confess I never played Doom, nor have I played Halo – I’m not a big first person shooter fan – for one thing I miss a lot so my first person shooter experience consists of going “shit shit oh come on I hit him” and then watching as the words “game over” shows up on the screen for the 15th time in as many minutes and me just getting bored with the damn thing.). So the eye candy stuff works nicely.

The rest, well, not so good – once you started dealing with human beings problems emerged.

The story consists of an Aliens like team of special commandos going to Mars where a research lab and other stuff has found (it’s kind of confused) that human life originated on Mars that they were messing with genetic material and bad things happened and they have some kind of instant travel between Mars and Earth that makes you throw up.

Now here’s one that I noticed when they used the ark (the instant transport) everybody upon arrival puked – it that was the case wouldn’t it make sense to give everybody a barf bag before they left or if that was practical at least a basin or two so they don’t have to keep mopping the floor all the time.

And then there is the squad. Now here is where I got really annoyed or bored with the deal. These fellows are supposed to be commandos, top line soldiers and what not, the space whatevers. Now while it maybe hard to get guys to do this in the future – one thing I know for sure is that the Rangers, Seals, Green Berets in addition to their testing and training they also evaluate potential recruits mentally. You don’t people with shall we say issues going into dangerous situations – but this squad it’s a squad of psychopaths and misfits better suited to guarding a warehouse than being an elite team. Ones a drug using pervert, one is a kid on his first mission (again you have to be in the army a while before going into special forces – you don’t take geeks out of boot camp) the Sergeant is a martinet who turns into a psychopath later in the movie (mostly cause the script wants him too – Rock does an okay j0b with a stupid part). Ones a slick ladies man (black guy – like come one let’s get another cliché in there) one is a self mutilating religious freak – ½ the squad would have been booted out of the army under section 8 in less than a week – or at the very least reassigned to something like the motor pools so they wouldn’t have weapons in their hands.

There was also the Soldier with the dark secret (he is the brother of the chief lady scientist on Mars – at least they weren’t former lovers – I’ll give the writers at least a ½ point for trying to come up with something new) and the rest were just monster chow.

The fist 1/3 or more of the film is trying to gin up the suspense – which since it’s a movie called doom doesn’t work to well – I remember saying “come on make with the death already!” as we got yet another scene where the marines with flashlights on their guns (this is the future right? 2050 or so? What about infrared? Nothing says here I am shoot me in a dark room as turning on a flashlight.) Enter a room and yell “Clear!”

Once the action starts it doesn’t make any sense people die or they don’t the monsters are zombies or some such created al la Aliens from people’s bodies (but not all people – some kind of gene is to blame – but I’m not sure it’s like only folks born evil turn into monsters or some such – it’s confusing and stupid) and then Rock turns evil kills people and fights with the sensitive soldier and then things blow up and then the movie ends and I need a stiff drink and I have a feeling of emptiness in my soul because once again time I could have spent watching my shoe had been wasted on this film.

In other news Joe Lieberman spouted batshit crazy ideas about attack Iran like right now on national television and instead of being dragged off in a straightjacket and having thorazine pumped down his throat with a turkey baster was listened to respectfully by the interviewer.

The Senate is going to debate a no confidence vote for the Attorney General. There seems to be a sense that won’t get to the floor because there aren’t enough votes for Cloture or whatever the term is – maybe so but if I was a mean person (and I can be) I’d want every GOP Senator’s named linked to a vote saying Alberto Gonzales was a-okay with them.

Peace Love Scary Monsters in the Senate