Good New, Bad News & Romance as it where

Lots of stuff in the presidential race these days – John Edwards who truth be told is closer to my political views than the other democratic candidates is dropping out. Now when I say closer – it’s a matter of degree rather than I think the others are doody heads.

And actually nobody is really saying what I think needs to be said – that a major part of the next administration’s job is going to be undoing the damage done and putting the creeps who did the damage in fucking jail.

They have lied, lied and lied, turn agencies that we rely on to ensure the safety of our food, the drugs we take and the water we drink in to dumping grounds for cronies, tortured, used the justice department as a political tool, destroyed documents and flat out stole taxpayer money – billons of dollars of it – all in the simple blind pursuit of power and sweet sweet cash and unless there is some measure of consequences for this they won’t change a bit – they will figure they can just lay low, toss sand in the gears and blame the Democratic party for everything then get back to looting the government in 4-8 years. They are not going to change and why should they? They have no earthly reason to. However some jail sentences may convince them the rules have changed and perhaps not being total evil bastards would be a better use of their time.

Thus end-ith the rant – I’m trying to be calmer.

Speaking of complete bastards – the buzz is the Rudy – after finishing 3rd in Florida – where he was going to springboard to the nomination and on to victory– is going to drop out.

In some ways I will miss Rudy and Rudy’s many many cheerleaders in the media thrashing about trying to explain why finishing 3rd is actually good for him – but on the other hand it will be nice not to have to deal with his skull like face on the TV or papers.

And I remember the absolute Yahoo on the subway train some months ago who was insisting that Rudy was going to be the next president – I think about how he’s feeling and smile inside. Yeah I like being right sometimes.

In a long post mortem in the NY Times they danced around that with Rudy, the better you got to know him, the more you disliked him leaving a Professional campaign consultant to remark that the more he campaigned in New Hampshire the lower his poll numbers went – leaving the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

And now he will stagger out of the race as gracelessly as he staggered out of the office of Mayor of NYC – the aura of 9-11 notwithstanding his offer to stay on a bit longer as mayor really turned a lot of people off and reminded everybody why they hated the little prick in the first place.

And let’s not forget that one of the reasons that Rudy was able to be there for all those press conferences on 9-11 was that his emergency command post was in flames that day. – It was apparently a very nice bunker - sorry emergency communications center – with cigars in a humidifier even. But it was located at 7 World Trade Center (against the advice of his experts) and burned down when the Towers went.

I also suspect that part of decision to quit will be that he hasn’t spent all the money he has yet and if memory serves he can keep what’s left if he quits. And there is little Rudy loves better than money (maybe cheating on women but other than that).

In other notes I’ve been trying the electronic dating world – no luck at the moment but I’m still not quite sure what I’m looking for in a relationship and that may have something to do with it. As a performer one reason to have a girlfriend/boyfriend to have at least one person coming to the show (“ah come on honey you promised”). This seems to happen more often with guys than women – I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen some one at a open mike or places like the orange bear where the sensitive guy on stage is signing this meandering shipwreck of a song and there is a girl staring at him with absolute loving worshipfulness – not so often the other way.

The thing is with our stuff – a woman looking at me with absolute loving worshipfulness while I’m singing about bondage equipment is going to make me very very nervous. And we’re just trying to get people to laugh not contemplate their wonderful sensitive inner life.

I’m so sensitive – that’s why I stole you car (hmmmmm)

And of course St. Valentines day is coming, an event that makes single but looking sensitive folks like me drift into a pit of wild churning self loathing and bleak sense of utter failure – so I’m going to take my hands off the wheel for the moment until the day passes.

And good luck to all the couples out there – it’s a high stress time for them as well. Such a perfect example of the modern world – what is supposed to be a celebration of romantic love turning into an over hyped stress pit.

Peace Love Good-bye Rudy.

A Blue Tuesday, My Dwarf can't find his body and Ghastly Horror

Tuesday’s just as bad

Well it maybe seasonal or allergies or something but I’m kind of blue today. Not horribly but still a bit down. IT could be mid winter blahs – it could be just I’m feeling old and sad and lonely.

And it could be that my dwarf is stuck.

Let me explain that – I was on World of Warcraft last night (yes one of those) and I was wandering about the world just seeing what there was to see when I found this dam – like Hoover dam sized dam and just wandered about – then in a moment of foolishness I walked to the edge and not being that good at controlling things still – went over the edge and fell to a painful death (at least it was for the dwarf – for me it was embarrassing)

Death in WOW is not that big a deal – your ghosts show up at a nearby – or not so near by grave yard and have to go to your body – although you are called a ghost or sprit you move the same as you do when alive – no floating through doors for you my friend - you walk.

So I’m stumping along back to the body but when I get there I have to jump off the dam again – and as the dwarf is in mid air the message – so you want to become alive again shows up – heck no I think – I’ll just get killed again and in my ghost form hit the bottom.

This is where it gets to be a problem – I’m in spirit form at the bottom of the dam – my physical body is however stuck in some corner where the dam meets the valley wall – and it’s too steep for me to climb up to get close enough to revive myself. (I’ve tried over and over again)

Okay I think I’ll just find a way back up jump off the damn and get myself killed again and this time revive myself in the graveyard – there’s a penalty for this – not much but you don’t like to do it.

Well I can’t find a way up – like no way – the entire area is surrounded by sheer cliff walls that I can’t get up – there isn’t even a salmon ladder for the fish.

So I’m stuck – I’m going to have to find some other location – I haven’t seen a way to get to where I was – and find a place to get my body back.

It’s going to be a neat trick – there is nothing but swamp land as far as I can see – that and sheer walls I can’t climb.

Gonna be a long evening for the Dwarf – that’s for sure.

The Blood of Ghastly Horror was as expected a confused mess of fractured plot strands – bad acting and production values that would shame a public access TV program where all the host does is rant and rave about the Masons running the world.

The movie started off as a pretty dull jewel robbery gone bad film – and then the producer and director decided to add a horror angle later by sticking footage of John Carridene jabbering with another actor about how he had put a micotransmitter into the brain of a brain damaged man – turning him in to the main psychopath of the Jewel robbery film – the films budget can be easily seen by noting – while the conversations between John and the other actor were supposed to have taken place over a couple of days neither man clothes are different – and in the Frankenstein monster bit where John activates the monster – the brain activation what not that sits on the top of the head of the psycho guy is a construction helmet painted silver. It later it used by the psycho guy to kill John – John who had at least 3 sons to feed was known for taking anybody’s money – but if you paid him more he would do a better job – they didn’t pay him much in this film.

Then – since that wasn’t a) confusing enough of b) bad enough – they added a book end over plot to the above mess by inserting the character of the psycho’s father who has studied voodoo in Jamaica (yes Jamaica) and has created some kind hulk jr. looking zombie thing that kills a bunch of people in the first five minutes of the film and then reappears at the end of the film to menace the daughter of the character John Carridne played. And then kill the Psycho’s father in the standard isn’t that ironic moment all horror films like this have.

While Tommy Kirk is billed near the top of this film he doesn’t do much except wear ugly 70’s clothes (the ties so wide so garish) and yell into a phone.

There is one nicely bizarre moment where the Psycho’s father berates John’s daughter for John’s inserting the micro chip in the Psycho’s brain – he insists with his natural (voodoo) methods he could have save the psycho.

It really doesn’t have the luminous weirdness that giants in the genre have – it’s a hack job done by self confessed hacks.

Peace Love trapped Dwarves

Monday, Recording notes and what not.

It was Monday all right.

The subway was full of people who looked like they wanted to be just somewhere anywhere else.

I understood – esp as we waited with the open doors at Queensbrough plaza that let the cold damp early winter morning wind overwhelm the heating while we waited for the 7 train to come in – and of course just as those were about to open – ours closed and off we went leaving behind on the platform the poor buggers who wanted to change trains. The MTA says that they do that because of the schedules (actually subway trains have schedules – you’d never know it but they do) but we all know it’s because they are sadistic bastards and this is one of the pleasures of the job - viewing the sad despairing faces of commuters watching the train leave without them.

Didn’t get as much done in the studio as we wanted – it took a while to set up – and that with what was in retrospect unrealistic expatiations about what we would be able to get done made things kind of tense. And I didn’t really do as well as I could – maybe it was over confidence maybe it was being too worried about the guitar solo I had maybe just a bit tired whatever I wasn’t in top form – And poor Insect Girl was struggling with a sore throat all day and by the end of the day her voice was reduced to a raspy low whisper –

There is a tension that floats around when you record – esp when things go wrong – and you remember that you’re paying for this and ½ hour just slipped by without anything useful put on tape (or disk really nowadays) you start to lose your temper or get tense or get down on yourself (my favorite thing to do) and start to get irritated by little things people do.

After my experiences recording I think that one of the things leading to the break up of the Beatles was that all they did was record in the studio after 1965-66 (I forget when) and that had to have had an effect – day after day after day of “okay rolling” no that didn’t work – okay – George we’re going to try this one more - oh for Christ sakes Paul can you stop playing the god damn piano for two seconds? I’m trying to – yeah? Well go fuck yourself too you god damn pretty boy – what was that George - no I have no idea where the hell Ringo is”

And so on. I can imagine it going that way – on the 35th take of Penny Lane. Try the temper of Mr. Rogers it would.

Anyway we’re going back in a couple of weeks – to do the mix down and re-do some vocals (mine included) – hearing my someone else on playback was painful. And I hope for my sake the lesson is learned.

In looking at the results of the voting as the primaries unroll I find it somewhat heartening that in New Hampshire the voters didn’t listen to the “she’s a woman with those body parts how can she be president” from the village media nor the whispers of “you know Obama is like black” from of all people Bill Clinton and other surrogates (rule #1 of modern dirty campaigning – don’t say the rotten things yourself – have someone else do it, mostly by whispering in the ear of a pet journalist and having them go on the air and say “Obama – do people know that he is like black? That is what some prominent Democratic Party members are saying.”

Anyway – the good news is that the voters have said “just shut up about this – we are in trouble and times are bad the last thing we need to do is screw around with this bs”

And I thank them for it.

Also is has been a grim pleasure to watch the incredible shrinking Rudy G – go from the Media Darling front runner to a man worried he’s going to finish behind Ron Paul again. Couldn’t really happen to a nicer creep – whose campaign has been one of the worst run train wrecks I’ve ever seen. Rudy – per Jimmy Breslin - ‘a small man looking for a balcony’ fared horribly when forced to deal with the person to person interaction that the early primaries require – because frankly to know him is to loathe him. Tack onto his personal arrogance (He has a tendency to barge through crowds of supporters – supporters mind you – surrounded by body guards and staff do the skut work of shoving the great unwashed aside) his painful lack of knowledge about foreign affairs, national policy and economics you have a miserable candidate.

It’s funny that there seem to more and very fervent Fred Thompson supporters out there in the net verse now that he’s dropped out of the race than when he was in it. It’s getting like the buzz before he entered the race – when Chris Matthews was speculating on what Fred smell like (as odd an observation as has ever come from that very odd man).

Got The Blood of Ghastly Horror from Net Flix – and it looks awful – hell even the producer said it was a mess – the story goes that he and the director did this crime pic but nobody was interested so they added some horror aspects but nobody was interested and then slapped some additional footage onto the mutant beast and included it as part of a 6 movies to show on TV deal they got with American International. This in addition to starring Tommy Kirk and John Carridine who never refused a part until several years after his death and you have the recipe for a god awful film. I can hardly wait.

Peace Love Tommy Kirk

Winter, Politics, Frankenstein and Kimi

Typical cold winter day today – there is a dampness in the air – the trees are leafless and their branches stark and twisted looking against the dark blue of the sky – they look a bit like illustrations of nerve ganglia you see on science shows these days – it’s been long enough now you’re not sure that they ever had leaves.

Another winter sight is commuters huddled near one of the Advertising bill boards or the Subway information sign because it blocks the wind.

There was also one of those scary looking old women searching for bottles and cans in the trash – I only seem them in my neighborhood but then that’s the only place where I am early or late enough to see them all wrapped in various scarves and what look like parts of blankets wheeling a shopping cart or just carrying a plastic bag full of bottles and cans as the root through the garbage.

They scare me a little – they seem in some ways to be the angel of death (which in many mythologies is represented as an old woman) and I keep kicking around a Steven King style story where they also collect the souls of the dead for recycling.

All in all a typical winter morning

I notice that the he-man Hillary Hater’s club is now suggesting that what’s really happening is that Bill Clinton is running for a third term as president – which can’t be done! I mean Hillary can’t be running for president herself – she’s a - gasp – woman with lady parts and all sorts of things like that. She can’t possibly want to be president herself.

Now how this fits in with the story they were telling last week that Hillary was a scary she beast whose pocketbook contained special castrating shears for the easy removal of the testicles of her male supporters – some of which she wore as a necklace looking more like Kali the Hindu god of death than anything. This being a beard for Bill doesn’t quite follow that.

The ones most up in arms about the bill thing were the folks that upset that Reagan didn’t get to run again after the second term – what a joy that would have been – the press making excuses for his Alzheimer’s fueled rambles – “I had a nice little doggie once. Mommy is my doggie?” Extolling his communication skills even as his brain turned into a sponge filled with blood.

For me the allure or charm of Reagan was always very very elusive – I thought he was a complete fake – from his died hair to the tips of his shoes. I found his patriotism equally phony sounding (it may have been heart felt but I have no insight into what Reagan really felt all I know if that it always rang false with me) even when talking about the Challenger it just sounded wrong to me. Flash flags chants of USA and nothing else.

Nuts.

And don’t get me started on Bitburg.

Much stuff in the papers about the death of Heath Ledger – sad – 28. I learned so much after I was 28 that my head spins when I think about it.

The celebrity press of course is tearing into this story like they are vultures on the veldt with a fresh wildebeest carcass in front of them. Like many feeding frenzies it’s disgusting to watch and the noise gets in the way of concentrating on important things like oh whether Brittany is pregnant or not.

Or something – this economy thing maybe.

Nah.

Meantime the soft pink people in congress are going to sell us down the river again. They are trying to pass –over the objections of a few Senators Chris Dodd for one – a FISA bill that will retroactively provide immunity from prosecution and lawsuits for the Telecom industry – it’s being pushed as a war on terror thing even though there is evidence that the illegal wiretaps started before 9-11. But the Telecoms have more money than god and have bought a lot of people – including Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid who is going after Chis Dodd and the other Senators who are going to filibuster this with a hell of a lot more energy than he has shown dealing with W and his cronies.

Watched – well watched and dozed off to – Frankenstein Conquers the world – actually the Japanese title is Frankenstein vs. Baragon – it’s a mid 60’s Toho effort that stars Nick Adams and Kumi Mizuno and is pretty strange – even for mid 60’s Toho.

The story goes in 1945 the Nazis send Frankenstein’s heart to Japan (actually the Frankenstein Monster’s heart but they call it Frankenstein’s heart so we’ll call it maze and It’ll work) which sans body is still beating – the heart arrives in Japan and is sent to Hiroshima just in time to be nuked.

Years later Nick Adams is working in Japan with Kimi on the effects of radiation – as a side note Kimi later noted that Nick had a tendency to fall in love with his leading ladies – which he did here – I can see why although it’s a bit different when you have a wife and kids already yes? But that was apparently Nick.

Anyway – they seem in the film to be a couple but they never make it explicit – not sure why maybe just not wanting to hit any taboos in the markets I guess. But in the course of their work they stumble across a orphan who has blue eyes – they go on to discover that this is Frankenstein – grown (just how it doesn’t say) from the heart brought to Japan.

Meantime the monster Baragon shows up and starts destroying things and Frankenstein grows to huge size – and escapes. They then spend the last part of the movie fighting in the shadow of Mount Fuji until Frankenstein defeats Baragon and then they are both buried in a landslide caused by the standard end of film earthquake.

Despite Kimi and Nick (hearing him being dubbed in the Japanese version is a hoot) – this was a hard one to follow and keep interested in. The problem is that well – the Frankenstein monster – since it’s obviously a guy with makeup when he starts to fight Baragon it becomes all to painfully obvious that Baragon is a man in a suit – yes well all knew that but there is that suspension of disbelief thing – it’s harder when you can see the strings you know.

Later

Peace Love Kimi

Tired Monsters and what not

Random Neural Firings:

Not a lot of energy today – can’t really tell why just flat and slow – it’s one of those order in pop in a film you’ve already seen or better yet get out a book put some music on and find yourself asleep in 11 minutes - days.

Playing the world of War Craft a bit – have several characters of the which the Dwarf Warrior (yes it’s that corny) Hodforth is the highest rank – I’m also doing the voice thing with The Enemy Below and Insect Girl – and I keep finding myself sounding a bit like Mr. Tullball the Tim Conway character from the Carol Burnett show “so look at that being attacked by the wolves yah. – could use a little help here you know” or after finding some quest items in what looked like wicker baskets “You wouldn’t think that evil trolls would be much for going on picnics but go figure” and the like. It amuses me immensely.

Recording on Saturday – going to be a long day – still not 100% on the guitar solo for “None Believes what you saw - been a bit well a lot over playing while insect girl sings – practice mostly – and remember more like BB King (the right note not a 1,000 notes) than Yingway Malmenstein (I can play faster than you) with just a touch of Buck Dharma (shard of ice to the brain) put in there.

But looking forward to the rest of it – it’s a fun group and we do manage to keep each other loose – it’s great fun really.

So we’re hoping to get our tacks down and then if we have time a quick track of “Stop Talking About Comic Books or I’ll kill you” by Ookla the Muk to send to them as a show of thanks for them letting us cover their song.

I’ve noticed that not only does the low self esteem bit not do you much good when you’re going okay – it’s actually even worse when you screw up. When I was over playing I got awfully down on my self to the point where the other’s felt they had to buck me up a bit – it was nice of them to do that but just once in my life I’d like to hear a complement without out thinking “what is a or b thinking saying that I’m a screw up” or take some criticism or even just a suggestion with out feeling “well what the hell did they expect I’m a screw up” playing in my head. Just once. Life as it is thank you.

Thinking more about Cloverfield I’m a little less horribly vehement about the film and yet am in no hurry to see it again. I’m told that there is a bit in the end where the couple what who die at the end are seen taping themselves at Coney Island and in the back round something splashes into the bay – it’s said that this is the arrival of Harry the Happy Amphibian. Maybe – I’ wait on nexflix for that .

And somebody suggested that the main characters are made intentionally annoying – well if so they did a damn good job – and why? Maybe shallow or something but dicks? Why?

And since we didn’t stick around for the end of the credits – we missed a couple of things – one a voice saying “help us” and then a burst of static and words you can’t make out. But the millions of g’nomes out in the net realized that the words were backwards and just flipped them around – and the words are “it’s still alive.”

Planning for a sequel much?

I notice that Fred Thompson (who Chris Matthews thought smelled very manly) has dropped out of the GOP race – Actually after he announced it was hard to know he was in the race.

Peace Love zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Diana Rigg – It’s been a while.

Sluggish Blue Monday on Tuesday and Big Crabs

On Mondays my thoughts are sluggish and slow and leaden with a sense of ‘eh’ about everything – it happens every Monday and are even worse when it’s a Tuesday.

So I’m kind of stuck for things to write and or think about today – not much happening at the office – it’s going to be sales kickoff week or some such so most folks are not in.

Wish I could be more excited about the Giants win than I am – but I’m not mostly cause I really can’t stand the coach and Manning gets on my nerves. Well he doesn’t the constant attempts to make him into his brother by the NY Sporting press bug me. The guy does what you want a first round quarterback to do and you can hear them carving the plaque for the hall of fame.

Part of this, I think, is fueled a bit by the deep dislike of the Patriot’s head coach that lurks deep in the NY Sportswriter’s DNA – which have turned the Patriot’s into the team of the Anti-Christ in the eyes the same press – which is a bit funny considering all those “oh no, hating the Yankees is just the face of Jealousy” stories they run and air during the baseball season.

But that said – I just feel sluggish.

Maybe the Attack of the Crab Monsters had something to do with this.

Produced and Directed by Roger Coreman – (again always a bad sign) it’s a pretty simple story – radioactive fallout creates a crab mutation that in addition to being pretty damn big – SUV big – also it has the ability to absorb the memories and knowledge of the people it eats. And can either talk or commnicate in some manner.

Anyway the story opens with an expedition arriving on a tropical atoll with express purpose of finding out what happened to the original expedition. As they discover over the course of the film – what happened was they got et.

So as the team of scientists and flunkies (the H’odruves if will) set up we are given the back-story as only Roger Corman can – by people droning on and on and on while they barely move. As this is happening the flunkies put about a ton of dynamite in a storage shed (why they brought it is unknown) and do other flunky stuff.

Then – as in the prior expedition people start getting et one by one – the twist here is that the crab (or crabs you only see one but I’m not sure if it means there is only one or that the budget was the standard size for a Roger Coleman film and they could only afford to build one. No matter.)

Anyway the twist is that once the crab has et you it learns everything about you by absorption – which could make it something more awful than death – the horror of not only knowing that you were being eaten by a crab monster but your memories of the time you wore the dress, ball gag, and the anal plug because she wanted to try something new will now be shared with the collective consciousness of the Crab Monster. That is true horror.

So the Crab is luring folks to their painful death and subsequent chowing down on them – gradually the group figure what is going on – mostly by one of the scientist saying “I know what is happening – and he then proceeds to tell everybody.

The Crab meantime decides to shorten the odds a bit by blowing up parts of the island (using the dynamite – a neat trick but the budget won’t allow us to see any of this – we are treated to stock footage of explosions. Lot s of them

In the end the island is reduced to a small outcropping with an radio tower - the crab crawls towards the last three and then as the male and female lead watch – the third wheel who sacrifices himself to save the world (played by the Professor from Gilligan Island) does so by crashing the radio tower down on the Crab Monster – killing it and himself.

Which leaves the male and female lead along on a postage stamp size island – no water and only a bare chance the radio messages they sent were received by anybody.

Still there is plenty of crab to eat. (and in a pinch a bit of the professor)

Peace Love not so big crabs boiled in salt water servered with beer and hammers

Cloverfield & The H.U.D.

Last night The Enemy Below, Insect Girl and I went to see the above film – my report as follows –

WARNING SPOLIERS GALORE

Well they all die – well almost all of them (one gets air lifted out of Manhattan) – one done gets blown from the inside up by some kind of bug, another is crushed by a bridge collapsing, one is et by the monster (more about that later) and the last two are vaporized by the a-bomb they use to kill the monster at the end of the film. By the by I think I understand what the title means now – after they drop the bomb they have reduced Manhattan to a field of Clover.

Anyway the film starts with the Male lead – who’s name I forget – how about that for a bad sign – is filming things with his camera – get used to this camera and the shaky shots it has we are going to be looking at the world through it for the next hour and ½ - they gave The Enemy Below a headache about 20 minutes into the film.

Anyway Rob (I looked the name up) is enjoying a moment of post coital bliss with lizzy (or Beth or something) in a beautiful apartment overlooking Central Park (it’s lizzy’s dad’s or something) he wakes up the lovely liz, they chat a bit, he tosses strawberries at her (a neat trick while filming it at the same time) and then they natter about what to do with the day – it’s all this oh isn’t wonderful to be together moments from early in a relationship – it made me hate them very very much.

There is nothing in the world more boring than watching two narcissistic upper class twits in love – really, I would rather listen to a physics lecture. At least then, I’d learn something. I mean yes love is wonderful if you have a fucking huge apartment overlooking central park but love can be wonderful in a studio apartment as well - it’s the kind of Hollywood New York shit I can’t stand.

Anyway the film jumps to about a month after this – we see Jason (again I looked) Rob’s Brother and Lily (who is apparently Jason’s Girlfriend) putting things together for a surprise party for Rob. We don’t get to know much about Jason over the course of the film but that’s okay because he’s a dick and the less time you spend with a dick the better. But he’s in good company - most of the folks in the film are dicks, but before I go off on that, I feel I need to explain why they are fucking dicks.

To continue – Jason is filming Lilly get stuff from a store while complaining that Lilly wants him to go to each guest and film them saying good by to Rob who is going to be gong to Japan to become the vice president of some company – it’s never mentioned what company and it’s just was well. Rob looks about 10 years too young to the vice president of anything except maybe the glee club at college but I digress.

So Jason is being a dick about filming things. (I keep using that word but hell it fits) since, I guess it’d be in the way of him pouring as much booze as he could down his throat during the party. (At least he’s consistent) So he farms the task off to Rob’s not so bright best friend Hud thus insuring we have a long long night of dickness.

Let me explain – Hud is a dick. A huge god damn fucking uber dick – he is the one filming the rest of the film until the very end and you come to hate him very very much.

He’s supposed to I assume near the same age as Jason and Rob but he acts like a very immature 16 year old – he should be hanging out with the damn goonies you ask me.

So off we go, the party starts and folks are having a good time – Hud the Uber Dick tries to hit on this girl named Marlena who is having none of it (good for her – she’s whacked out of her mind and sucking down vodka like they were going to ban it tomorrow but at least she has a clue about things)– Jason and Rob are swilling beer Lilly is running about (I rather liked Lilly she was the only character that acted anything like an adult human being in the film – no that’s not right – ah yes she was not a narcissist twit - that’s better.)

I have to assume that Budweiser paid for some product placement in this film because all the guys are drinking it and not only that shoving the damn bottles in the camera. Another thing that bugged me – this is very well off dude and a party – they would be drinking a micro brew or at the very least Stella which is the upscale beer of choice these days – not bud.

Then – ta – da – in comes Beth – with some kind of date looking person – Rob freaks out and sulks. It seems Rob who is also a dick – hasn’t called Beth since their day of coital bliss because he’s going to Japan. This despite Jason telling us that Rob has been in love with Beth his whole life (all 22 years of it) and H.U.D. (Huge Uber Dick) after telling everybody at the party that Rob and Beth had done the humpy hump dance is also there saying he has to tell Beth what he feels.

Okay Rob is a dick as well – he left Beth high and dry after their night of passion and well what was she supposed to think? And Rob isn’t even thinking about what Beth feels or doesn’t feel – he’s too busy feeling sorry for himself. Frankly if I was going to Japan and had a woman who loved me (that I loved as well) and I was leaving I’d be with her every damn chance I had – and maybe reconsider the Japan gig as well – there are lot of jobs in life you know, not a lot of love. But Rob as I say – is a dick... – so they have a blow up, Beth leaves with the guy she came with. So there we are on the fire escape when - kaboom!

This by the by is 30 minutes into the film – at about minute 10 I was “muttering come on make with the death!’ There is a fine line between creating suspense and boring the shit out of people – I think in a Giant Monster flick it’s about 20 minutes – In the original King Kong you arrive at Skull Island about 20 minutes into the picture (and the background music starts then too it’s a very interesting effect) We got the first sighting of the big G in the original Godzilla at about minute 20.

So what we’ve had up until now is a pretty damn silly soap opera with silly people in it – a dumb friends if you would.

Then the city starts to explode – they go up to the roof and while there large pieces of buildings start to fall on them – they run to the street and in the famous scene from the film already the head of the statue of liberty comes rolling down Lexington ave.

Now you can’t go wrong with doing stuff with the statue of Liberty – the ending of the original planet of the apes where it’s buried in sand, the Day After Tomorrow where it’s covered in ice make a deep impact – so does the head lying there. Something huge and bad is happening to New York.

They – in a moment of clear thinking – decide to get the hell out of Manhattan – cause something huge and alive – we haven’t see it yet – is ripping the hold shit out of the city – and per Marlena – eating people.

There is a good moment where everybody argues over the best place cross the river – Just classic New York – everybody’s an expert and everybody’s got an opinion.

After some discussion, they head for the Brooklyn Bridge.

As they walk Rob is starting to have huge pangs of guilt about what he said to Beth before she left and tries to call her on his cell – in fact he gets through – which only would happen in a movie – in every emergency in New York since the invention of the cell phone – cell phones become useless – it’s simple really – the cell phone operators figure that at any given time maybe 10-15% of all the Cell phones in an area are going to be in use and plan their networks accordingly – when something bad happens 9-11, the blackout, Paris Hilton did something stupid, everybody whips out their phone and the network can’t handle it (an argument for land lines at least as a back up yes?).

So Rob is on the phone to Beth – but in the noise and confusion he can’t hear – so he stops – Lilly stops, Hud stops Jason keeps on going and

Well you knew this was going to happen – the beast (which we really haven’t gotten a real good look at yet) tears the Brooklyn Bridge apart – and Jason is gone with the bridge. And yet H.U.D. still lives and keeps on filming.

They all retreat – then Rob starts to listen to his messages (this is what I mean not only did he manage to get Beth on the phone he got his damn voice mail) but his battery dies so without a word to the other folks (Lilly Malena and the HUD) he runs into an electronics store that is being looted. We get a little plot info in there – a better shot of the monster and what not learn that it has things living on it about the size of a big dog like some kind of tick that are jumping off and eating people themselves – it’s a very bad day for New York. Rob is oblivious to this he’s rooting about looking for a new battery for his phone he finds one (and it’s charged – don’t phone batteries have to be charged before they can work?) and gets his voice mail – AGAIN! (Man I want to know what his plan is – a rainy day and I’m outta touch) – and he learns that Beth is hurt trapped in her apartment at central park – and about 59th street. Or was when the recording was made. So he’s going to go save her – and rather than a) let him go commit suicide on his own or b) walking up to him grabbing him by the collar and punching him in the face until he passes out and then carrying him out – they decide to go with him – with HUD filming

At this Point the Beast shows up again – there is much destruction and yelling – all well done by the way – unlike the American Godzilla the monster effects are very well done and impressive – wish there were more of them actually – and our four heroes end up underground in the spring street subway stop with the battle raging out side.

After some quiet time so the folks can stretch out their acting chops (well not really – HUD still acts like a dick to Marlena who has no good reason to stick around with these folks other than we need people to get killed later) and Rob weeps or something.

Then his cell phone rings – again – and in a fucking subway station – I have got to find out who his service provider is.

It’s his mom – so he lies to her saying that they are being evacuated (they are going after Beth) and then tells her that Jason is dead. Rob really is this the best time to drop that bomb on your mother? You’re already lying about what you’re doing would it be so damn hard to say – I don’t know we were separated or something like that.

But after that they decide to walk the subway tunnel from Spring Street to 59th Street – now I did that walk and more during the ny black out – it’s a good 2 hours or more. And we are with them for most of the walk.

As they walk along H.U.D. continues to jabber about what the beast is, talking about how it would be really scary if a homeless guy on fire came running down the tracks – the rest of the group keep telling him to shut up. Really, it’s like being stuck with your hyperactive D&D playing younger brother when on a date.

The tick like creatures attack them – Malena being foolish comes back and rescues the HUD from the ticks, getting bit herself and earning the undying enmity of the audience.

They emerge from the tunnel at – ta da – 59th street – and smack into an army post – Rob tries to convince someone that his girl is trapped in an apartment on 59th street. In a refreshing change nobody treats Rob like anything but a dick and they start hustling him and the rest out to the choppers letting them know in the process – in another plot point that the government is going nuke Manhattan if regular weapons can’t kill the beast (who like of looks a bit like some kind of mutant amphibian when you get a good look at it – so I’m going to call him Harry the Happy Amphibian for the rest of this) .

However, Marlena after saying she feels dizzy then starts bleeding from her eyes and is hustled off into a biohazard area where she blows up – apparently, the tick’s bite gives you a super Ebola and you’re done.

Thus perishes a character whose reason for sticking around is never clear.

One of the soldiers in an unbelievable change of heart lets the kids go and let’s them know that the last chopper out is 0600 and the bomb is going to be dropped 0700.

Tick tock says the clock - 2nd plot point if you’ve been following along in the Sid Field workbook.

After some tedious stair climbing and roof walking (don’t ask) they get to Beth’s apartment and she is there and alive with an iron concrete support rod through her shoulder which is pinning her down like a butterfly in collection.

After the lovers reunite – and she says “you came for me” and I suppressed an urge to vomit, they lift her off the support rod and get her down stairs – just in time to see Harry the Happy Amphibian coming for them, (you think they owned him money or something the way he keeps showing up).

And they start walking towards the helicopters.

Okay – now if she hadn’t already bled to death before they got there – she should have gone into shock when they yanked the damn thing out 2) she would have bled to death by the time they got to the bottom floor unless they did something to staunch the bleeding – about the only thing they could really do was what they did in the west and cauterize the wound by pouring some lighter fluid in the wound and sparking it up – disgusting yeah but its that or bleed to death.

So they approach the helicopters – and here comes Harry the Happy Amphibian again – Lilly gets out on a chopper but the others have to wait. They get on the next chopper but Harry is right there but he is hit by a stealth bomber attack. This doesn’t work.

Okay here’s a small problem – sure the stealth bombers look sexier than the B-52 but when you’re dealing with a beast about the size of the 30 story building that doesn’t have radar the stealth aspect is pretty pointless – what you want is sheer carrying ability – several bunker busters to pierce the skin and explode inside Harry’s body – that’s a b-52’s strength.

Anyway – the bombing attack fails – the chopper’s tail is knocked off by Harry and they crash.

For a long moment, we have static shot of a part of the chopper.

“oh please let them all be dead,” I said at this point.

No – the pilot is dead but not Rob Beth or the HUD –they crashed in central park - as they get themselves together there is Harry the Happy Amphibian – again. HUD is looking up at Harry who is looking him – the next moments are bit confused but it seems clear that Harry has bitten HUD and the HUD is dead as the camera drops to the ground and then tries to auto focus on HUD’s face – it’s not clear what else is left of HUD .

I got a real problem with this – Harry is fucking huge – for him to leave anything of HUD would be like a great white shark leaving ½ a chicklet after he struck.

But at least HUD is dead. Alas, the movie is almost over.

Rob and Beth flee with the camera – talk into it a for a bit – tell each other they love each other and are vaporized by the fireball from the a-bomb. At which the movie ends.

For the Enemy Below the best part of the evening was the trailer for the Star Trek film. Me. The film didn’t utterly stink again the monster stuff was very good and what we had come to see – but the weakness of this film was like Spielberg’s war of the worlds – we have to spend time with people we really come to dislike – actually dislike almost instantly and learn to utterly hate by the end of the film.

The message here seems to be – tell people that you love them, just in case a large monster attacks your city forcing the air force to nuke the city, killing you in the process – don’t let that happen to you.

You know – Life is uncertain but it’s not that uncertain.

But just in case becasue you never know:

Peace, love, I love you Harry the Happy Amphibian.

Crack and Inframan

Off to buy crack

Well not really but world of warcraft battle box awaits me somewhere out there along with the little mike that will allow me to shout gibberish while playing. Oh the temptations – oh the temptations.

“Ock loggga where’s the damn Toyota equip button”

“Look out behind you!”

“I feel like someone put a cat in my underwear”

And so on.

Off to see Cloverfield tomorrow – right now I’m hoping it doesn’t suck rockets – which it well could do so – frankly the problems of dealing with the attack of a huge monster in New York are not as interesting as the monster attacking New York – but even so It’ll be better than the American Godzilla film where folks seemed to ignore the monster as much as possible so they could deal with their far more important personal issues.

We’re trying out someone new to replace insect girl – she’s had one rehearsal and seems to be a pretty damn good fit – it helped that she’d heard the songs before and liked them. We had one guy a bass player come in once – turned out he was petty active in his church – which as you would suspect – meant he wasn’t quite the right person to be playing Someone else or the Bondage song.

The new girl not so much – she’s currently rehearsing a burlesque show where she sings while wearing white fur skimpy angel costume – so she’s goona fit.

After years I finally found Inframan on DVD – I had rented this years ago at blockbuster on an old faded vhs – after having seen it on TV a couple of times.

It’s not nice to call a film insane but really here if the shoe fits what can you do?

The story is about the invasion of earth by an evil alien princess – who can turn into a bird or lizard with wings and her Skeleton wearing motor cycle helmets with Viking horns on them servants and her special monsters all of whom look like they are rejects from Toho and the power rangers.

Actually this film is pretty much a power ranger template – absurd rubber monsters lead by a shrieking or yelling lunatic – fight the hero for ever and ever and ever – the tradition of endless fights against hordes of underlings that was started in the Japanese Starman films is continued here.

The Inframan is a member of some kind of elite fighting force (which has to be about the lamest elite fighting force in the history of elite fighting forces) is turned into a cyborg by the group’s leader (the professor).

Also I noticed that the Inframan (I forget his name in the film so I’ll call him Ted) didn’t turn into the Inframan right away when confronted with the bad guys – he seems to think it would unsporting to do so – despite the fact that several of his allies get killed by the monsters while he is till in human form (I mean challenging yourself is all well and good but if it gets folks killed guy turn into Inframan)

Also turning into the Inframan causes him to a lot of back flips – each and every time he turns into Inframan – about the 55th time this loses its charm.

As I said the fights go on and on and on and then – just stop with the bad guy blowing up – we’re not always sure why – but they do blow up.

There is one lackey of Princes Dragon (who has very fake dragon feet) is called she demon and she has eyes in the palms of her hands. There are so many things wrong with that. She also blows up, everything blows up – I suspect this is one of Michael Bey’s favorite films.

There are also monsters who look like they were attempts to weaponize the slinky – they also blow up


The film exhibits a manic insane energy and people yell a lot – but it all makes no real sense but if you are watching a film titled Super Inframan (was there a regular Inframan you wonder) you pretty much know what you’re going to get. What would be really weird would be Hamlet done by people in rubber monster and superhero suits jumping and kicking each other while reciting the lines from the play – now that would be strange.

No more time to go down that path –

Peace Love Inframan

Crazy People and Robots with Monkey Brains

Okay – certain things are becoming clear – the gop voters are not very happy with anybody in the race – and I can see why not – we have More Plastic than Plastic man, Mitt Romney – John McCain who’s campaign slogan could well be “not as batshit insane as the rest of them” Huckabee “batshit insane - religious”; Ron Paul “batshit insane - secular” and Rudy “More amazingly batshit insane then you can possibly imagine” Fred Thompson - he’s like Regan, he’s asleep a lot.

And it looks like the White House lied about progress in Iraq – this is no real surprise they’ve lied about progress in Iraq since the first US tank crossed the border.

Meantime our boy king visited the Middle East and other than playing with swords, being fed and saying bad things about Iran didn’t seem actually get much done.

Indeed the only thing he did do was tell the prime minister of Israel that he didn’t believe the NIE that said Iran had dropped its atomic Bomb project in 2003. Which while it comes as no real surprise it does depress the hell out of me. W has acted like a spoiled lunatic child his entire time in DC and except for Social Security has gotten his way all the damn time. And that he has decided not to believe the NIE and act accordingly is horribly damaging to the gathering of high level intelligence. While it’s always been a truth of the intelligence services that you can’t convince the higher ups of things they aren’t ready to believe – this blanket dismissal of a report that doesn’t match what he wants is the kind eyes wide shut stupidity and stubbornness (and isn’t it interesting that both of those are linked so closely) that gives us disasters like the Bay of Pigs and well Iraq.

Meantime – some scientists are experimenting with monkeys – this is nothing new scientists have been doing things with monkeys for a quite a while. These guys are working wiring monkey’s brains so they can control robots. Let me write that again – using monkey brains to control robots. I.e. the monkey thinks walk the robot walks the monkey thinks raise an arm the robot raises an arm the monkey thinks fling poo and well, it’ll try at least.

I’m sorry yeah they are trying to get to the day when folks in wheelchairs and victims of strokes can function better but in the meantime we run the risk of unleashing a race of terminator style robots with a hostility towards human beings (see the guy killed by Monkeys in New Deli) and a taste for bananas – the soul chills.

Still Robots with Monkey Brains sounds like a possible song title. Something to mull.

I was going watch attack of the crab Monsters but I was too grumpy (Ha Ha I slay myself) Actually the disk arrived from Netflix with a crack – so I have to wait for them to send a new one. Eck.

Still no interest except from people wanting payment for having interest, in Mike Bloomberg’s run for president – Mike isn’t there a supermodel out there you could date or throw yourself at in an embarrassing manner? Maybe an actress – lord if I had you’re money I’m pretty sure that’s what I’d be doing.

Peace, love, Anne Francis Stars in Forbidden Planet

Nothing - Gigging - Twister - Brainiac

Not getting a damn thing done.

Not one thing. Of everything I wanted to do this weekend – about the only thing I managed to get done was sleep more than usual.

Other than that bupkis – well maybe it is just for the best – the end of the year burned me out and I’m not used to two gigs in a week either.

The gig at the Delancy was a lot of fun and mad mad props for everybody who came out – especially the folks who saw us already that Saturday – I mean man what can I say – other than thank you thank you thank you over and over again like Steve Martin in one of his early albums.

And meantime – since she isn’t going to be signing for while – Insect Girl has taken over the mailings and working on the bookings – I have to say that Insect Girl is much more aggressive than I am in getting bookings – and to tell the God’s Honest Truth – a Malaysian Honey Bear is more aggressive than I am in getting bookings. It’s the low self esteem bit – the gift that just keeps on giving.

And as just another example of why I can’t stand my own head sometimes – I have this awful sense of all these good things are going to have to be paid for by having bad things happen. This isn’t what I want to be feeling but it’s what I’m feeling and god does it stink.

It comes from my growing up – partially from the attitude of my folks and partially because – not to go into any sordid details cause they are rather irrelevant to the topic – bad things were always on the way. It just was – you got used to in and learned to cover yourself before the blow it. Which when the blows stop coming – is not the best way to spend one’s time.

Really.

Meantime the old world just keeps rolling along and this is one of the more fascinating headlines I’ve seen in a while –

“Naked Twister" parties draw complaints in suburban Dallas”

Well I shouldn’t wonder – yes?

Apparently there is a large swinger’s club in this suburb that meets at this one guys split level home - where there are such things as the Orgy room and naked twister. All good fun one presumes but the town doesn’t want it – several reasons are given – the noise, it destroying property values, the number of cars that clog the street on a Saturday night and of course the overwhelming need of some people – haunted by the idea of thrills they will never experience and yet sorely tempted by them – to close things like this down rather than deal with the urge to play a kids game while buck naked and oiled up.

Speaking of twisted – one of the things I did do was watch Brainiac about 3 times – as I left off the Baron has returned after 300 years to take his revenge on the descendants of the folks what did him in – after he returns riding on a comet and kills the first person he meets and then magically puts this mans clothes on leaving the poor victim dead in his boxer shorts.

The film then shows the baron setting him self up as a visiting Spanish nobleman and tracking down the descendants he needs to kill – along with the odd bar girl – with each victim the baron blinks a light in their eyes – the DVD commentator called it the blinking flashlight of doom – then he, if the victim is a woman he makes advances then, after turning into the big-nosed hairy beast with two fingers on each hand each with suction cups on the end – and a foot (maybe a foot and a ½) long forked tongue that he uses to eat the victims brains.

And also – in a pretty disgusting bit – the baron also has what looks like a chafing dish full of brains that he takes out from time to time and eats a few bits using a long handled spoon to dig out the portions.

It’s never quite explained how these brains ended up in the dish – but there they are.

Meantime as the trail of bodies grow – a police inspector and his aide (Benny I think his name is) The Inspector looks a bit like Tele Savalis with some weight on and Benny looks like Phil Silvers (he does the comic relief – god do I hate comic relief – it is rarely comic and is even more rarely a relief) are on the trail – at the end they storm in with flame throwers just as the Baron is about to eat the brain of the female lead and burn him up – the male lead doesn’t do a lot of anything in this film, mostly he just stands about looking distressed.

The picture – at least in Spanish has a wonderfully demented air about it – and an energy that is wonderful to watch as the Brainiac goes from snacking on one brain after another. Just wild goofy stuff.

To quote Captain Beefheart – “Give me Brainiac fingers only with more hair”

Peace Love Brainiac fingers

Insane, Civil Wars and Consutlants

Well that’s just insane:

The current BS floating about the he-man Hilary haters club is that she faked crying and with that won the sympathy vote of those oh so emotional women which gave her the win in New Hampshire. (Hilary is now the first women to win a presidential primacy ever).

Okay now before the primary Hilary crying was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin the sign that her campaign had collapsed.

As with lot of people Hilary is my third choice for the democratic nomination – after Edwards and Obama – she’s a bit too much of a creature of the village for me to be comfortable with but honestly stands head and shoulders and most of her body cause she is wearing stilts compared any of the GOP candidates. But I think we could do better.

That being said – I think the munchkin chorus signing of Ding Dong the Witch is dead by the assembled talking heads of the Media and the Beltway village ranks as one of the more disgusting displays of juvenile minded nastiness I’ve seen.

Speaking of GOP candidates – I still can’t quite get over Ron Paul’s saying that Lincoln was to blame for the civil war – that he could have just bought the slaves from the owners.

While I’m no expert on the origins and causes of the civil war - it’s a turbulent and twisted period of American History – but there was that little matter of firing on Fort Sumter that made things pretty much moot as far a peaceful solution to the problem existed. Also one of the rights that the South was claiming to defend was the right to own slaves – hell the economy of the cotton gowning areas in the south depended on them – so they weren’t about to give up working assets (which is how they viewed their slaves ) and there was a very heavy emotional investment in owning slaves as being a sacred right (not for the first time the bible was quoted to justify something rotten) and once you start thinking like that well, compromise is just not a option at that point.

It’s one of the reasons that I’ve always found those ‘if the south won the war’ sci-fi books to be dishonest about slavery – in all these books the institution has died out in some nameless form without really causing any disruptions to the society.

To me that just doesn’t ring true – after the war the GOP would, if the elections were getting close, ‘wave the bloody shirt’ i.e. Lincoln and by extension all the union casualties in the war to rally support for one rather dubious Republican Presidential candidate (for example Grant who while a good general was an abysmal president) after another. It was pretty effective all things considered.

If (and lord what a big old if that is) the South had emerged as a independent state – I’d expect the same bloody shirt waving to have gone on the instant someone mentioned slavery – in this case perhaps using Stonewall Jackson’s shirt or Robert E Lee’s but the effect would be the same – any talk about abolishing slavery would be linked to dishonoring the heroic dead. Humans don’t change all that much.

Well enough of that. Pages of the free papers this morning gifted me with the somewhat unlovely visage of Mike Bloomberg and with stories about how he’s mulling a presidential run.

Like this we need – it’s a stupid idea. Not that anybody is going to tell Mike that. There isn’t a political consultant in the world that is going to tell a billionaire client – the man who signs his checks “this is a stupid idea - why don't you make an ass of yourself with a supermodel like normal rich men” . At most he’d suggest more polling or something and hope that he can milk the gravy train a bit longer. “We’re going to need some polls to show the trend – cost you about 100-200K over the next week or two”

I don’t think anything but checks to aforesaid consultants is likely to emerge from this nonsense – nobody is saying ‘if only Bloomberg was running’ anywhere. I suspect there is a worry that an honest to goodness progressive might get in and actually end up doing something about the broken system in Washington (which while broken to anybody outside their little circle does manage to make insiders very well off indeed.

Well time to wrap this up – get on with things – gig tonight come if you can – no guitar solo but the bar looks quite nice.

Peace love The Delancey 8pm $6.00 cover.

Pissed off

RE; New Hampshire Primary - Forgot the main rule – the pundits don’t know a god damn thing – they only try and sound like they do.

Well I’m pissed as hell – anyway I don’t like getting angry at people but sometimes sweet mercy.

Let me explain

Folks on my space post all sorts of things – they other day on the band site someone put up a bulletin on “I’m a bad American” now this is a piece of right wing spam that has been floating about the internet since 2000 when it first showed up on a site called Free Republic a web site only slightly less rancid with mouth breathing hate than the American Nazi Party’s site - anyway the bulletin there are all sorts of statements like

“When I order a Big Mac I want to do it in English”

This defies common sense – is there a place in the 50 states where you can’t order a big Mac in English? Jesus you don’t even have to speak human to get a big Mac. It’s entirely possible that the people behind the counter are speaking Spanish but what the hell is the problem with that? Nothing wrong with the language is there? Or are you worried that they are saying bad things about you in a language you don’t understand?

Sometime ago Fox (yes Fox) had a program where they put people into situations they would never be in normally – I forget the show it lasted about 11 minutes but there was one useful segment where a white guy (who all but admitted he was a bigot) was given the black like me treatment and went off into the world – the one moment that I remember was that he went to a night club and was he was surprised that none of the black comedians told white jokes. (this is on a par with Bill O’Rielly being surprised that the customers at Sylvia’s weren’t screaming ‘where’s my ice tea motherf-ker!’). And it gave a good insight into the bigot mind set – and the non-bigot mind set, a bigot obsesses about the “other” (gay, black, female, Martian) constantly – they are hypersensitive to their presence (i.e. the counter workers at McDonalds speaking Spanish). People who aren’t bigots don’t do that – we have better things to do with our time. We just want our Ice Tea Motherf-ker.

There’s another one “the only flag allowed should be the American Flag”

Again – no sense here – there are all those state flags, the Irish flags on St Patrick’s day the Italian Flags in Little Italy on Columbus day, the Greek Flags in my neighborhood on Greek independence day and all those Pro and college team flags and if memory serves Roman Catholic churches have a flag as well. Is this about banning them? No of course not – it’s a dog whistle for bigots who are afraid of Spanish speaking brown people.

So anyway when I find out this wasn’t a hack (and I was informed that ‘they’ – not specified who they were– want Spanish to be the primary language) I suggested the person calm down and not watch so much fox news and Glen Beck – they’d do a lot better, and suggested politely that the no-nothing bs being spouted in the mailing was the same sort of thing said about the Irish (my ancestors – and you should see the vicious cartoons Tomas Nast did about the Irish in New York in the 1850-60’s – he drew them so they all look like Apes) the Italians and the Poles (and pretty much everybody else as well. And it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.

Anyway the response was not as I had hoped – where at least you try and examine what you said on the chance you were wrong – (as I have been more times than I care to think about) – especially when it is about a piece of spam e-mail (which don’t have the best record of being accurate – if one came over the net that said it could prove that W was the result of Barbara Bush having consensual sex with a chimp, as much as I would like that to be true, I’d be pretty skeptical.) – So the person is off the island.

But I’d like to address the issue of ‘these are my opinions and if they offend you yadda yadda yadda” cause it’s bunk. I’m not easily offended – Jesus you can’t sing what I sing and be easily offended – but I am offended by this kind of mouth breathing nonsense – (no offense to the mouth-breathers out there) it’s 2008 people – can we maybe stop judging people by the idea that the more like you they are the better they are in if they don’t look like you they aren’t good. To quote the killer angels “the man who judges by the group is a pea wit”.

I mean really – can we stop obsessing about race for a while please – we really have much bigger problems to deal with right now than the levels of Melanin in skin.

Still that is America – and obsessing with race is what we do. Louisiana at one time had an elaborate system to keep track of your race so they could keep track of who was really white (if memory serves if you were 1/16 African American you were not white – boggles the mind really).

Well enough time wasted on this nonsense – tomorrow we have a gig and we got to the studio soon to finish up the record – I suspect doing my guitar solo will take up at least ½ the day.

Peace Love Brown people

New Gig! Politics! Big Monster!

WE got another gig!

Well why not – when we started out it was tough getting gigs (kinda still is) – so when they drop into out lap like they just did – we go. So we’re playing at The Delancy – a pretty nice looking club in the East Village area – if anybody shows up it’ll be a miracle but maybe the folks what missed the Luna can give it a shot.

We’ll see.

Watching Hillary Clinton’s campaign sputter and toss a few gears, I keep thinking back to the 1972 election and the candidate Hunter Thompson called “Big Ed Muskie The Man from Maine” – her entire idea was a) not to say anything that could endanger her number one position b) pretty much not say much of anything (but this is a pretty common deal) and state mild inoffensive blandness.

We have a tragic and absurd war to deal with, the cost of health care is breaking the system, the housing market has collapsed (taking what knows with it) there is a credit crisis that has tipped the economy into a recession, for the first time since the 19th century England has a better standard of living for the average Joe than we do, The Iranian and the US Navies are playing chicken in the Persian gulf, and the idea that their kids will do better than they did (aka the American Dream) is dead for far too many – this is no fucking time for careful as you go stuff and we all know it, we feel it in out bones – we’re going full speed towards an ice berg – which is melting because of Global warming.

The problem is that there are enough powerful people (and their well paid toadies) who like the way things are now and will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Witness this absurd face of Mike Bloomberg making noises about running for president on a unity ticket – decrying the partisanship of DC – I may note he didn’t have many problems with it while anybody who, for example, doubted the wisdom of going to war with Iraq was called a saddam lover and traitor, hell he gave the NYPD free reign during the republican convention to spy on such dangerous group as the Quakers and Mothers for peace.

No Bloomberg isn’t about bi-partisan ship – he’s about keeping the status quo or more precisely keeping his deck chair exactly where it is.

Ugh – enough I’ll start sounding like a Jacobin in a bit and I hate when I do that.

Still counting the days until Cloverfield (10) not sure if the film is going to be any good really – but how many big monster pictures do they release these days – none really. My worry about the film judging by the ads that I’ve seen is that the story is going to focus on a group of young New Yorkers dealing with the attack on the city by a giant Monster – which has a Godzilla meets Friends feel to it. And frankly I’m not too hip on something like that. King Kong was the star of f-king King Kong and it’s central focus - the huge weakness of the American Godzilla was its insistence on concentrating on the boring people rather than the Monster (who was also boring but I’m not going to get started on that rant again).

So I’ll let you now about that.

Peace Love Giant Monsters.

Thank you - and you and you and Dwarf Warriors

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you all for coming. It was a great time – I couldn’t really hear the rest of the band as much as I would have liked but we were so well damn rehearsed and tight that it didn’t matter.

Except maybe my guitar solo – my first I have to mention – with the band sawing away I found I couldn’t hear what the hell I was playing and ended up wandering back towards the amp.

But that’s just minor glitches – we played in a big club on a Saturday drew a nice number of people – make some nice noise and had a damn good time doing it. It’s what the band experience should be yes?

Pics will be up soon.

One thing – there was a woman who kept screaming Elvis! Between songs – I only assume because of S-Dog’s outfit – but she split the minute the set ended much to S-Dog’s puzzlement – and mine too while I have yet to have a woman scream for me while I’m playing but ladies if you do, please don’t vanish after the set – that makes no sense at all. So don’t do that.

Hope to be trying out some temporary Insect Girls when we get together this weekend – Insect Girl and the Enemy Below are going to have a baby so Insect girl is taking a break for a bit.

That said we’re looking for someone who can sing a bit, dance a bit, and can deal with the songs and the attitude of the band. That may take some time.
We’ll see.

This will have to be shorter than usual. Sorry no time this weekend to watch bad film – will do so soon.

Random Neural Firings

On a temporary pass for World of Warcraft or more crack for geeks – I still have to get the controls down right – too many times so far the camera has ended up with me staring up a dwarfs butt (not fun). Between that City of Heroes and about ½ dozen other damn games I haven’t finished – it’s a wonder I have time for anything else at all. Really.

Hillary Clinton needs to fire her campaign manager – he’s been shoving her over to the right until she can have very friendly conversations with Rupert Murdock and take campaign contributions from the same groups that helped destroy her heath care proposal back with Bill was president. It’s been a campaign of mush mouthed speeches that don’t offend or inspire. It’s been a far too careful front runner’s campaign and she’s paid the price for it.

Did one of the Spears girls do something dumb again? I wasn’t paying attention.

Peace, Love, Mohawk Dwarf Warriors

Dec 35th and Big Lizard Trouble

Well it’s finally the year end – in our business it takes some time to shake out all the numbers at the end of a year, month or quarter so while the rest of the world is looking at the calendar saying “yes I did mean to go to the gym more often but not today it’s only the 4th” for me it’s December 35th and I’m pivot tableing numbers.

It has a real “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons” feel to it let me tell you.

Nervous about the gig – more worried with asking folks to come I’m crossing the line from being persistent to being completely annoying. Shyness low self esteem whathaveyou whatever it is it’s something I keep running into as I try to get the word out and spread and what not. At this point if they don’t come, ain’t nobody gonna stop them (to use the old Yogi half cliché).

Anyway I had no time to write anything since I was e-mailing anyone with a pulse asking them to get to the gig. I pulled off today a bit on that since I found myself wanting to write “I’ll be your best friend” in the body of the message and I wasn’t entirely kidding.

I thought the Giant Gila monster was familiar and it turns out it was directed by the same luckless bastard that did Killer Shrews and the Giant Claw (do I hear strike thee here).

I don’t have a lot of time but suffice to say that the story (such as it is) revolves about the Male Lead Chase as a giant Lizard – actually a normal sized lizard wandering about what looks like HO scale somewhere in Texas (they don’t even use a real Gila Monster which is actually okay by me the damn things are poisonous – an attribute they don’t mention in the film but in some ways that makes sense if you’re the size of an Atlantic City Tour Bus poison just gilds the lily).

The main character is this guy named Chase who is the leader of the hot rod crazed kids in the town (we never really see the town just a few houses scattered about) he works as a auto mechanic, also runs a towing business, spends his time souping up his rod and taking care of the family since his dad died the family includes a little girl with braces on her legs so she can walk and some kind of exchange student who has some kind of European accent not quite French who is in love with Chase – who also wants to be a rock n’ roll star (which again makes sense – Rock n’ roll, like being a good football player or even being a good driver is a way out ) The man is presented as a utter saint. He even sings to his sister on a ukulele some kind of semi religious song about god wanting people to laugh or some such (I’m not sure sometimes if god made people so they could laugh or he made them so he could laugh but I have no time for that). The song is painful to listen to and he sings the fucking thing twice – once to a room full of teenagers who, had this not been a movie, would have beaten him to death with the empty coke bottles.

Meantime the Lizard is going about eating people and all the adults are going about getting a snoot full of booze and then getting behind the wheel of their cars. Well I lived in nowhere near anything I’d probably be doing the same thing.

There is one character who reminds me a bit of Gabby Johnson in Blazing saddles – you can’t really understand a word he says – In his case, I’m not sure the booze in his bottle was fake.

Anyway the climax of the film is when the Gila monster attacks the big teenage dance at the barn (what barn that’s barn? Who the hell cares) right in the middle of the second rendition of Chase’s ukulele song – I actually cheered – and the later the monster is blown up by Chase ramming the lizard with his hot rot (which has two jars of nitroglycerine in it) which blows the lizard up. Chase alas managed to jump clear before the explosion.

All in all I'm just sad that there went another 70 minutes I won’t have back – along with a sense embarrassment for the writers who tried to work in hep rock n’ roll phrases into the dialogue and the poor actors who had to say the lines.

More later.

Peace Love Big Lizard in my back yard.

Happy New Year and the Wasp Woman

Well it’s a new year, a new day and the same old attitude – I’m trying to not sink back into my standard feelings of utter doomedness (is that a word?) and that it’s all futile.

We have a big big gig on the 5th – and we are trying to get folks to come and hence we are beating the bushes like drink maddened beaters - who back in England and Scotland would walk ahead of the hunters or even worse walk towards the hunters whacking bushes with sticks trying to flush the birds out from their ground cover and into the air were they could be slaughtered by gun wielding inbred nitwits – who were known to shoot a beater or two – but hell jobs are hard to find in some places, especially in places full of brush were the grouse hide.

One of my Christmas presents from the Enemy Below and Insect Girl was a 3 DVD set of drive in movies – films from the 50’s to early 60’s that were cheaply made with long dull stretches that I remain convinced were put there to allow couples to neck without actually missing any real part of the film. I watched a couple over the weekend – one of which was Wasp Woman. Which is 72 minutes I’ll never get back again.

I knew I was in trouble the instant I saw the credits “Produced and Directed by Roger Corman.” Now saying produced by Roger Corman is not a bad thing – he had a good handle on the movie business as it existed in the 50’s to the late 70’s and knew what a particular type of film would gross, hence he knew what his budget had to be in order for the film to make money (tiny most of the time) - and he had a good eye for talented young folks willing to work sweat shop hours for a chance to break into films. As a director his films are dull plodding tedious affairs filled with people talking to each other about things it would be better to just show.

And that’s the case here.

The story opens with an old scientist talking to a wasp’s nest as he smokes it. The Old Scientist has been doing work on wasps on a Honey company’s dime. Side note Wasps are one of the bees and bee keeper’s worst nightmares – they have been called ant wolves by people who think such things up because of their raids on Hives.

Anyway the old scientist has been experimenting with Queen Wasp Royal Jelly (which isn’t a badly translated Hong Kong product like it sounds but is what is fed to small wasp larvae to turn them into queens, or bees in the case Queen Bee royal Jelly (but I digress). Seems the treated royal wasp jelly has the ability to reverse the aging process. The VP of the honey company that has employed the Old Scientist fires him because what he’s doing has nothing to do with bees. He then leaves before the Old Scientist can talk about synergy or some such.

The old man is in a bit of bind. Who in the world would be interested in a treatment that will reverse the aging process?

Cut to….

The main board room of Starling cosmetics – run by Janice Starling. At the meeting she is going over the sales of the company and they are bad and getting worse. She asks why and what would be in a normal film the male lead but in this case is only the Younger Jerk points out – with not a little glee mind you – that the reason the sales have gone down was that Janet Starling is no longer the face of Starling Cosmetics. She says in a tight voice that one can not remain a glamour queen forever.

This film did have the opportunity to look at how judging women does to them but it’s a film made in the 1950’s when it was considered unseemly for a woman to be single of a certain age and running a business.

At any rate the board all jump on Janet with two feet about this, especially an older man (hereinafter the old jerk) who agrees with the Young Jerk and plays with a pipe as well.

Looking at this film in 2008 the nasty misogyny in the characters and the film itself leaps out at you. (And no, this was not an intentional subtext put into the film – Corman’s not that good) I mean come on – this woman founded the company had been its face for years and then bowed out. All the folks at the meeting look well fed and their clothes match, they have obviously been making damn fine money while at this firm – so instead of trying to help their boss fix the problem, they all pile on her.

Now looking for a way out she latches onto the old scientist who shows that his injections can turn guinea pigs into smaller rodents. Janet sets him up with carte blanche but demands that she be the first human experimental subject – The Old Scientist – balks but then with visions of a fully funded lab in his head agrees.

There are next some tedious, very tedious tooing and frowing where the Old Jerk and the Young Jerk are convinced that their female boss is being led astray by a conman because of her fear of looking old – which if you remember was the reason she took herself off the company’s ads. So He and the old Jerk plot and engage Janet’s Secretary Alice into their planning including stealing mail and the like.

The old jerk and the Young Jerk have jobs and titles but they never really do anything except cut the boss off at the knees and cluck about women (this by the way is the golden age that the right wing wants to go back to, thanks no, I gave at the office). An idea they could have come up with was to have a nationwide contest to pick the new face of Starling cosmetics – I remember several firms have things like that – but no snorting at the boss because she’s a woman is what they do.

Anyway the Old Scientist starts the treatments – Janet starts to look younger but then impatient with the progress takes a special concentrated dose that ends up having bad side effects – you turn into a wasp thing and kill people (then you revert to human form). Before that happens one of the experimental animals turns savage and attacks the old scientist and he in shock walks in front of a bus first going into a coma then having one of the most convenient cases of lost memory in the history of movies “there is something I can’t remember… Oh yes you turn into a killer were-wasp if you take too much”.

Meantime the wasp lady kills the Old Jerk (not a huge loss) and a night watch man and then the old scientist regains his memory and rushes into the lab where the wasp lady is -for reasons that can only be described as we need to end this film now – attacking her secretary, the young jerk fights her (by the by the wasp lady costume is pretty bad consisting of a black body stocking and an insect mask that makes the ones insect girl and Miss Trafalgar (Like the square) wear at one point in the bands act look like they were from the National Geographic) the old scientist wanders into the lab tosses acid at the wasp lady – who is then pushed out the window to her death by the Young Jerk. As this happens the Old Scientist dies of a heart attack. We cut to the dead wasp lady and then the blessed words “The End” appear. Meantime I presume the Young Jerk is asking the secretary to call the cops and get him some coffee.

Still this film was a cinematic masterwork compared to the Giant Gila Monster.

That’s next

Peace Love Wasp Women