Bonnaroo Music Festival took place over this last weekend, marking yet another kick-ass music festival I didn’t get to go to. The lineup featured bigshots like Eminem, The Arcade Fire, Lil Wayne, and Widespread Panic, along with some big names from the indie/alternative scene including The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, The Strokes, Iron & Wine, and Portland’s The Decemberists. The complete lineup can certainly go toe-to-toe with last Spring’s outstanding Coachella lineup, and was probably better overall than the Sasquatch 2011’s musical offerings, but of course that is subjective as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The one thing Bonnaroo has unquestionably and completely dominated the Summer festivals in, however, is…wait for it…DEATH.
That’s right, the Tennessee festival is pwning the competition in that category, as they usually do. Two people died at this year’s festival, both ostensibly from heat-related illness, although toxicology and autopsy reports haven’t been released yet (not to imply that drugs or alcohol could have had ANY part in this mess whatsoever…). That brings the Bonnaroo body count up to 10 since the festival began in 2002, and seems to indicate that perhaps…I dunno, maybe it’s time to make some changes? Listen, I trumpet for personal responsibility as much as anyone, and have limited sympathy for idiots. And spending all day in the heat and humidity of the festival, pounding copious amounts of booze (excellent for hydration!) and/or drugs, is kinda idiotic. But this is coming from a guy who, every year, stands in 90 degree temperatures at the Oregon Brewer’s Festival, consuming copious amounts of booze. Sooooo….it’s gonna happen. Thus, sad though it may be, the burden is on the festival organizers to find an answer. Maybe just“more” is the answer: More of the air-conditioned tents, more misters, more free water wells, and probably more medical personnel on-hand, particularly since the venue is approximately an hour away from the nearest medical facility.
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On another music festival topic, the lineup for Portland’s Music Fest Northwest was announced last week. The festival takes place from September 7 – 11 at venues throughout the metro area, and this year features headlining turns by Band of Horses, Iron & Wine, and Explosions In The Sky. Yes, just call this “MELLOW Fest Northwest”, as all three headliners are not exactly known for rocking the house. The Kills kick the festival off on Wednesday the 7th with a headlining show at the Crystal Ballroom, giving us one headlining act that can bring some punk-rock energy to the table. Other acts of note include Butthole Surfers, Archers of Loaf, The Joy Formidable, Ted Leo, Viva Voce, Blitzen Trapper, and the Thermals, though again, depending on personal tastes any of the over 90 bands signed to perform could be considered “notable”.
I personally have my sights set on the September 11 show featuring Band of Horses and Morning Teleportation. As previously noted, BoH can trend a bit mellow, but I love the idea of hearing them outdoors on a warm summer evening in the middle of the city. They are fresh off a tour opening for Pearl Jam and an appearance at the Sasquatch Music Festival (a death-free event in 2011), so they should be in good form and put on a great show. Check ‘em out below:
I am certainly contemplating checking out the Iron & Wine show on Friday, September 9, as I keep missing them when they come to town. Which is often, by the way. In fact, I really hope that lead singer Zach Galifianakis…er, I mean Samuel Beam (I mean come on, they ARE the same person...judge for yourself below)…owns some property SOMEWHERE in the Pacific Northwest, because he’s around here an awful lot.
Not that I’m complaining; Iron & Wine is a true go-to artist when I am feeling contemplative, want to paint an emotional work of art,or put wistful thought to paper. Cuz I do all three of those things, A LOT. No but seriously, these guys make some beautiful music, and again, the thought of their folk-ish, mostly acoustic sound wafting over the streets of downtown Portland is a pretty appealing one. As some of you know, New Order is my favorite band, so when sharing some Iron & Wine with you, I just couldn’t resist making it a New Order cover. I leave you with this, take care until next time!
There are a number of working parts that make the Antisocial Network happen. There are the grunt workers who toil daily to bring coffee, liquor, food, drugs, escorts, etc. to the writer, there are the “behind the scenes” people (the ones who spread the word) who are truly the wind beneath my wings, and then there are “the suits”, the executives that rule from on high. These Vulcan-esque illuminati provide the financial fuel that helps offset the staggering costs of blog production, but the “trade off” is that they get to meddle with the product. Sometimes this perspective is helpful; sometimes it produces decisions more disastrous than Paul Allen firing Kevin Pritchard. Today, I received a raven and it bore the news that this blog would be undergoing massive, sweeping changes, just a week into its life. So, okay, getting quasi-serious now, I just felt like movies/music/TV & pop culture, etc. fit one category, but shoe-horning sports in there with it didn’t seem like a natural fit. And feedback I received seemed to indicate that some people tuned out for the sports blog, so, I am splitting them into two separate blogs. This blog will run Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and cover the “entertainment” side. Then, if you are so inclined, jump over on Tuesday and Thursday to my new blog, Sport Werks (sportswerks.blogspot.com) and look for new content there on those days. Sorry if this caused any confusion, but it seems to make more sense, not to mention having two blogs rather than one can be fiscally beneficial as well.Now, let’s get something at least semi-interesting done today, shall we?
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I want to talk about a topic very near and dear to my heart…zombies.Always a horror movie fan, I was pretty middle-of-the-road about the undead as movie subject matter early on. Give me a good monster or alien any day over the traditional vampire/werewolf/slasher/zombie fare. Films like A Nightmare On Elm Street, The Thing, The Fly, and the first two Aliens flicks were the kind of stuff that scared the bejesus out of me when I was younger, and I loved it. The 90’s and early 00’s had some great horror films, regardless of the genre. Y’know, stuff like Scream, The Silence of the Lambs, The Blair Witch Project, Jeepers Creepers, and The Ring (save your crap about your Ringus and Ju-Ons please, I know, I know), but it wasn’t until 2002 when my horror movie life was forever changed. That’s when Danny Boyle dropped 28 Days Later out of nowhere, and my mind was officially blown. Resident Evil followed shortly thereafter, and even though it had some issues, I was already zombie crazed enough that I loved it. Then came 2004, and Shaun of the Dead and the Dawn of the Dead remake cemented the genre as not only my favorite type of horror movie, but probably my favorite genre overall. Things have quieted down quite a bit since then, although 28 Weeks Later (2007) and Zombieland (2009) were great, great additions the zombie movie family from the past few years.
Today we have, other than Netflix-fare zombie movies of varying quality, only AMC’s television series The Walking Dead to satisfy our zombie cravings (and even that’s between seasons!). However, that is about to change. World War Z, a 2006 novel by Max Brooks, is expected to begin filming sometime this year, four years after Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment acquired the rights.
Pitt will star in the film, giving the zombie genre its first A-Lister (sorry Woody), but the more important thing here is the story the film will have to pull from. And WWZ is a truly badass one, if a little bit atypical. It’s told from the perspective of several survivors of a recent decade-long zombie “war”, in short interview-style stories. While it will require a bit of a deft hand to cobble these disparate pieces into a coherent movie, there are a few key sections of the book (the U.S. military confronting the zombies in Yonkers, New York comes to mind) that could make for amazing set pieces leading to an amazing moviegoing experience. It will be directed by Marc Forster, the director of Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction, and Quantum of Solace. Having seen only Monster’s Ball and Quantum of Solace I am probably not the leading authority on the man’s directorial skills, but I know that I enjoyed both those films and that both were well made. And I’ve read that the screenplay follows a sort of Children of Men-style tone, which seems about perfect for the subject matter. I am really looking forward to this one, and I will pray every night to the Baby Jesus that Forster, Pitt, and co. can pull this off.
Thanks for coming by, as always. Make sure to check out Sport Werks for some(hopefully) fun sports talk, and be back here on Wednesday, as we get on the new schedule and probably talk music and whatever else comes to mind. Be good!
It's Friday, dear friends, which used to mean a trip to the theaters to check out all the hot new releases. Today, it means a trip to the theaters to check out all the hot new releases, IF you're independently wealthy or had the foresight to take out a small personal loan prior to heading out. Anyway, we’re just a few weeks into the 2011 summer movie crush, which we’ll affectionately refer to as The Déjà vu Summer. Or, if we’re feeling less affectionate, we can refer to it as The Summer of Rampant Non-Creative Douchebaggery. I am fairly convinced that all the major movie studios have designed a giant wheel featuring the names of every film released since 1980, and every few days they spin it to decide what to pitch for a remake. I mean, aside from the 10% or so of mainstream Hollywood films that feature completely original ideas and stories, what do we get? Remakes, reboots, sequels, and “the next superhero on the list” entries. This summer we have already gotten a buttload of sequels (it’s true; I double-checked my count to make sure), with new episodes of the Pirates of the Caribbean, Fast And Furious, Kung Fu Panda, and The Hangover familiesall already being released a week into June.
Oh, but that’s not all. Still to come, we’ve got more sequelage: Cars 2, plus new entries from the Transformers and Harry Potter franchises, and, um, Final Destination 5, will all be onscreen before Labor Day weekend. Add to that mix a few notable reboots/remakes, like new Conan, Fright Night, X-Men (sorta),and Winnie The Pooh (hey, it’s notable to some; in this case to all the 3-8 year olds who will get beat up a lot in a few years), and it becomes clear that “heavy on originality” is NOT one of the terms that best describes Summer 2k11.
Before you start bitching, and fill up my Comments box below (Editor’s Note: There is a “Comments Box” below) with hurtful slandering, I will mention that there ARE some promising original features out or coming soon this season, such as Prom, Jumping The Broom, The Beaver, Zookeeper…er, okay nevermind. Nah. Seriously, I am looking forward, I think, to Super 8 (opening today), Captain America, Cowboys & Aliens, and a few others. Green Lantern…well, you I’m not so sure about. I want to like you, I really do, but I like my superhero movies played with less camp and less iffy CGI. I have by no means written you off as a Summer bust, but I will be keeping an eye on you…
I’ve heard some pretty good things about the next installment of the Transformers saga, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Words like “a strong effort” and “easily the best in the franchise” have been posted by early reviewers. It sounds like things take a turn for the dark in this movie, with Chicago being basically wiped out and some other dire happenings, which often makes for the most engaging cinematic experience (The Empire Strikes Back comes to mind). But one thing I am absolutely LIVID about is the fact that Michael Bay dropped the beautiful and…um…beautiful Megan Fox from the production. I mean not to sound too Bud-Light-Drinkin’-Guy here, but Fox was the only eye candy we got, and…
…K. I forgive you.
I’ll be efforting to see Super 8 sometime this weekend, the new film from J.J. Abrams about a mysterious train crash in the late 70’s that releases something near a small Ohio town, prompting the townsfolk, and specifically a group of kids, to begin investigating. Abrams makes no bones about the fact that the movie is a direct homage to Steven Spielberg, and more specifically his earlier works such as E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I love this idea, as there is definitely a part of me that misses small-town America and the perceived innocence it possessed. Crossing that hometown appeal with Cloverfield sounds like a great idea to me. Sadly, being the Dad of an elementary-school student, I know how this is going to work out. I’ll go into this weekend targeting Super 8, and emerge from this weekend having seen Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer. Wish me luck, my friends.
Have a great weekend, and I hope you’ll join me again on Monday for more!
It’s Thursday, the weather is looking good, and things are looking up. In fact, if I didn’t have a kid home sick, with eyes so red I’m concerned she has the rage virus, everything would be blissful. So I’m sort of rethinking certain aspects of this blog, namely, will half of my 8 readers tune out on Thursday if I devote the column to sports? I’m contemplating switching to a M-W-F format, focusing on music, movies, and pop culture-ish stuff, then making a sports blog separately. OR, I could just jumble everything all together and just have “the blog” and talk about whatever comes up. Any thoughts? I ask you not as a producer trying to feed his rabid fan base (that actually made me laugh to myself a little), but more as fellow smart people wondering which format makes the most sense as a reader. Hit me up on Facebook with comments if you feel so inclined. As always, they will be sincerely appreciated.
I didn’t really give a damn about sports, pretty much at all, until about 1989, when BlazerMania gripped Oregon as the Portland Trail Blazers made their first of three runs deep into the NBA playoffs and contended for the league championship. Even then, I was slow to embrace the movement, as I am pretty sure I was too busy trying to become a cheesy dance club DJ and meet girls. But eventually, thanks mostly to my parents’ rabid fandom, I got the bug. And even though those three years of Blazer dominance never resulted in a championship coming to Portland, I was hooked. And now, almost 22 years later, I remain as devoted to the team as ever. Beyond the Trail Blazers, however, I really enjoy the NBA in general, and follow most teams and league goings-on fairly closely. I am also a big NFL football fan, as are most sports fans, considering pro football is the biggest sport in America. I am guilty of being a fantasy geek, and look forward to getting together with my usual group of suspects for the draft and season every Fall. I am definitely pro-sports-centric, as I find college sports to be a little generic for my tastes, but I do pay attention to what’s going on in college sports and can get excited when one of the Oregon schools rises into national prominence. I have no real allegiance to the Oregon Ducks or the Oregon State Beavers, as I attended (to use the term loosely) both schools, but I am a big fan of either school being a national power. I actually enjoy mixed martial arts a lot more than I thought I would, and find that if you make the effort to learn a little more about the disciplines and the athletes themselves, it is not nearly the barbaric spectacle that many people still think it is. I also follow baseball a little, and have a reasonable aptitude when it comes to most other pro sports as well. Then there’s the Portland Timbers. I will fully admit that I have historically disliked soccer. A final score of 1-0 (or, God forbid, 0-0) after 90 minutes of play just feels unacceptably unsatisfying. After a little more thought, though, I sort of figured that I could embrace the Timbers the way I embraced Triple-A baseball when Portland had a team: Go, sit out in the beautiful summer weather, talk to friends, and drink copious amounts of microbrew, with the game as an afterthought. Little did I realize how rabidly Portland would embrace the Timbers, and how vocal the fan base would be. The idea of casually grabbing tickets whenever we felt like going was out the window, as games sold out quickly. The Timbers have become a big deal in town, and the fan base sort of feels like a “secret society” that you’re not cool if you don’t get. There is a definite Portland feel to the whole soccer thing, sort of an indie-rock-and-good-beer vibe that I am attracted to, and so I am determined to overcome my soccer misgivings and learn more. So that’s my sports mindset, and now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can go forward talking about what’s going on.
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The biggest thing on my mind today relates to the Trail Blazers and Brandon Roy. Apparently, as the NBA owners and players have discussions about a new collective bargaining agreement, the idea of an Amnesty Clause is looking more and more like a reality. Typically, such a clause would allow every team in the league a chance to void one player’s contract, causing the money from that contract to not count against the team’s luxury-tax threshold so that team owners wouldn’t have to pay extra, assuming the player is picked up by another NBA team. This is generally just a financial relief for the owners, and would have minimal effect on the ability to sign free agents to the team or make trades that weren’t basically a dollar-for-dollar match. But (and this is a HUGE but), apparently the Amnesty Clause being discussed currently wouldn’t just affect the luxury tax liability, but also would remove the contract from the team’s salary cap directly – the money would come off the books, giving the team significant financial flexibility. This is a big deal for Portland, because if they decided to use the Amnesty Clause on Brandon Roy’s contract, they could clear almost $70 million off the books over the next four seasons. A couple seasons ago, the idea of the team “being able” to get Brandon Roy off the books would be ludicrous. Roy was a genuine NBA star, a player Kobe Bryant was quoted as saying was the hardest defensive cover for him in the league. Roy was averaging 22 points a game three years into his pro career, and his future was blazingly bright. Unfortunately, Roy’s knees had other plans, and they decided to start going bad on him sometime in 2008. Finally, last year, it was revealed that the meniscus in his knees had deteriorated, bones were impacting, and he would never be the player he was earlier in his career.
Which brings us to our current dilemma. If the “Super Amnesty Clause” does in fact come to fruition, should the Trail Blazers use it to clear Roy’s salary? It would almost certainly mean Roy would sign elsewhere for less money, and the man who is viewed as most responsible for the emergence from the “Jail Blazers” era would be gone. Anyone who witnessed Roy’s magical performance in Game 4 of this season’s NBA playoffs against the Dallas Mavericks knows that he can still contribute, possibly in a major way, to the team. But he’ll probably never be a “star” again, and may never even be a starter again. Is that worth $16 million a year for a team? While the “duh” answer would probably be “no”, I am going to say yes, the Blazers should keep B-Roy and not use the Amnesty Clause on his contract. Why? Because dumping Roy’s salary wouldn’t do anything of note for the team. NBA teams need to be below the salary cap in order to sign free agents or make trades that don’t basically match contracts dollar-for-dollar. Other than the draft, that is how teams build to dominance. But the Trail Blazers will most likely be over the salary cap for the next several seasons with or without Roy’s contract included, thanks to the contracts of LaMarcus Aldridge, Gerald Wallace, and Wesley Matthews. True, they could get under the cap in 2012 without Roy’s salary included, but that is assuming they don’t re-sign Greg Oden, Andre Miller, or Marcus Camby, and also let Patty Mills, Luke Babbitt, Elliot Williams, and Armon Johnson leave with no compensation. Someone is going to take cap space up in order for the Blazers to remain competitive, and the difference between being $2 million over the cap or $18 million over the cap isn’t seen on the court. Meanwhile, Brandon Roy could be a perennial candidate for the NBA Sixth Man of the Year award, take a few games off every season to keep those knees rested, and stay with the team he (figuratively) resurrected and brought back to respectability. I leave you with my final argument for my pro-Roy stance. Watch the video below, and with that, I rest my case. Talk to you tomorrow.
Let’s just get right out in front of this from the start: I hate modern network television. I have no use whatsoever for reality TV, at least not since Paradise Hotel didn’t get renewed. Er, okay, maybe “no FURTHER use” would be more accurate. I put in my American Idol time, but in my defense it was during a dark, dark time when my social options were rather limited and TV was just…there. I watched Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Carrie Underwood (yeah, I skipped S3, Fantasia and co. just didn’t do it for me), Katharine McPhee, and Jordin Sparks get pushed into the spotlight. Okay, going back and re-reading that, I clearly put in way too much AI time. But other than big Ruben’s year, I always wanted someone else to win, and found myself generally despising the AI voting public by season’s end. That, along with the fact that the musical selections were crusty and as vanilla as it gets, basically doomed the show for me. I mean, when Blake Lewis covering Keane is as off the grid as the show’s music gets, it’s time to move on. I haven’t watched since McPhee and Sparks’ back-to-back “bland pop musician” wins (which resulted in albums that barely registered, I might add), and since then it appears that the show has been taken over by “bland white guy” musicians, who, I’m willing to bet, aren’t going to register, either. As for other well-regarded (I guess) reality shows these days…all I’m left with is…really? Dancing With The Stars? Really? America’s Got Talent? Really? The Bachelor and Bachelorette? REALLY? The entertainment bar is depressingly low, apparently. I can’t really speak on network sitcoms and dramas, because I just generally don’t watch them, so I won’t. In fact, other than the shining beacon of awesomeness that is The Office, I haven’t watched a network TV sitcom since Seinfeld ended. And dramatic network TV these days seems to be nothing but the eighth new version of CSI or the 40th new version of Law And Order. Any day now I expect to see CSI: Tulsa or CSI: Wichita hitting the small screens, as the big cities are getting gobbled up fast. But again, I am not an authority on these subjects, and I get a fair amount of recommendations for shows like Community and, of course, 30 Rock, but unless I start plowing through episodes specifically to expand my knowledge base for this blog, I’ll be content to take your word for it.
Over on cable, however, it is a much different story. It seems as if there’s always some series to be locked in on, usually on HBO. Whether it’s The Sopranos, Rome, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Wire, or any of several others, the must-see-TV is over there now. And possibly my favorite TV show of the past 15 years, the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, was aired on the Sci-Fi (now the MUCH cooler and more fan-friendly “SyFy”) channel, and now about once a year on my DVD player as well.
Currently, there is only one show on all of TV that I am watching with rabid addiction, and that would be HBO’s Game of Thrones. Having not read any of George R.R. Martin’s epic A Song Of Ice and Fire novels, I went into the TV show blind, and it took a little while to figure everything out and really get into it. But once I did, by about the middle of the second episode, I was hooked. Game of Thrones is set in a medieval fantasy realm, and centers on several families vying for control of a massive kingdom.
The cast is great, and the characters are as well-developed as they are varied. There are a ton of characters, but they are presented with depth; there are good guys, bad guys, and a little-of-both guys, but all types are present within each different family/faction. My personal favorite is Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage. Tyrion is a dwarf, a little person, someone Dewey Cox would stand up for. He’s also extremely clever, brash, funny, crass, and rude, and pretty much just a lot of fun to watch.
The storyline is fantastic as well, using a slow-build technique to take the viewer from relative peace and harmony in the kingdom to, it appears, all Hell breaking loose before it’s all wrapped up. I definitely recommend this show; it’s not too late to catch up for HBO subscribers as all the episodes are still on On Demand. The suck of it all is that there are only two episodes left to air of season one, meaning a really obnoxious wait is incoming.
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That’s all for today; I have a sick kid home with me who has a very poor sense of humor regarding Dad ditching her to type on the computer for hours. We’ll be back tomorrow with some sports talk. Have a fine, fine day. Feel free to comment to anything I write, positively or negatively. I appreciate all feedback, and as I have no illusions that I am good at this, welcome any comments regarding ways to improve this thing. Thank you, and thanks so much for taking the time to check this out every day!
Ah, Tuesday, also known as “new releases day” for music and home video, and ALSO known as “theft day” as I have no doubt the torrent sites and usenet are abuzz all over the world even as you read this. Tuesdays will be the day I write about music, as DVD releases can get lumped into Friday’s movie talk. That said, I should probably mention my own musical leanings, so that when you hear me refer to, say, the Black Eyed Peas as a “national musical embarrassment”, you’ll get where I’m coming from.
It began simply, with AM radio and “American Top 40” with Casey Kasem.I remember sitting next to the radio as a kid, wondering how the bands could get back and forth to all the radio stations to play their songs so fast, especially a few times a day…it was astounding. It was all Top 40 as a kid; I didn’t develop anything resembling a musical stance until late junior high, where the Bingo spinner needle landed firmly on…buttrock. Yes, I was a Bon Jahovi Witness; my second concert (after an Oingo Boingo show that I just simply wasn’t ready for (“What? No “Weird Science”???)) was Sammy Hagar at the Memorial Coliseum on the “V.O.A.” tour, and I wore that “Rock Is In My Blood” t-shirt oh-so-proudly to school the next day.I continued on a downward spiral of Ratt, Dokken, Poison, and Twisted Sister, ignoring the angels fluttering around me, trying to save me by lending me their U2 and Echo & The Bunnymen cassettes. After high school, however, my fortunes began to change, as I was introduced to the band that would ultimately become my favorite of all time, New Order. A friend and I concurrently discovered the underage dance club scene, and the 80’s TechnoPop era was underway. I grabbed every new 12” single that came out on Tuesday by bands like Erasure, The Cure, Red Flag, Information Society, Camouflage, and so many more, and began turntabling with the clear plan of being the greatest DJ evahhhhh!!! Sadly, the TechnoPop era ended far too quickly, as Nine Inch Nails came along and screwed up everything. Pretty soon Depeche Mode discovered heroin and decided to try to sound like pre-Soundgarden Soundgarden, and Jane’s Addiction was playing in my club instead of Book of Love. The era faded, and Grunge was upon us. After slogging through the early 90’s only halfheartedly embracing the grunge scene, the Electronica movement took hold as kind of the “anti-grunge”, and I was all over it. This comfortable transition led to embracing acts like The Prodigy, The Crystal Method, Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim, and Moby, ignoring archangels fluttering around me, trying to ruin it by lending me their Limp Bizkit CD’s. Although I gotta admit, I did love me some Kid Rock and Linkin Park back in the day. After being stuck in this music mode for a little too long, a friend invited me to a couple concerts in June of 2005 that changed my musical leanings drastically: Athlete and Embrace, both playing at the Doug Fir Lounge. After that I discovered the terms “Britpop” and “Indie Rock” and soon was spending thousands of dollars on iTunes, loading my PC with Death Cab for Cutie, Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, The Arcade Fire, Interpol, and Keane. Since then, so many musical sub-genres have disbanded and sort of all melted together, but I am still firmly under the “alternative” umbrella and all the various sounds it covers.
So, (all) that said, Tuesdays will be a day to talk about a new release or two, comment snarkily about music I don’t like, and talk about a live show I attended or just general touring news.
Speaking of live shows, there was a lot of hype about U2 playing up in Seattle last Saturday at Key Arena. All I can say is, “no thanks”. Somewhere between “Pop” and “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”, U2 became the go-to band for Audi-driving 50-year-olds who have tired of Michael Bolton and Elton John and want to go “edgy” (see what I did there? “Edge-y”? /kneeslap). Songs like “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” and “Vertigo” just kinda sit there, doing nothing. Seriously, U2 makes Coldplay seem raucous these days. But that’s not even the main problem. If U2 was playing at a venue where I didn’t require some sort of optical enhancement to actually see the band members, I’d consider going to see them just for the four or five old songs they played. But let me make sure I’ve got this right…I can play $20 to stand five feet away from a favorite band, or I can pay $200 to sit a football-field away from them and pretty much watch the concert on the big screen. Is it really even a choice? Not as far as I can tell...
Well, this will have to do for now. There’s still a ton left to talk about, but this is getting long. Sorry about that, but you know the first movie has to be the origin story, right? Anyway, I am working my way through the new Arctic Monkeys record released today, and I have to say so far, so good. So really good, actually. Check it out if you get a chance. Have a great Tuesday and we’ll talk more tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, the Black Eyed Peas are a national musical embarrassment.
Happy Monday, everyone! You can all relax, and release the anxiety you carried around with you all weekend, worried that this blog wouldn’t be here as promised. *Whew*, right? So here we are, on Monday, which feels strikingly similar to Sunday to us jobless schmucks, except with less people around. The first weekend of June has come and gone, and, if you live around here, you got your first taste of summerishness. It was glorious, enough so that my Saturday night of going to dinner with friends and eating outside on the patio almost felt like a Saturday-night-worthy entertainment event in-and-of itself. Almost. Is it a sign of the transition into old-fartdom when going to dinner is good enough for Saturday night? Or is that normal, and i'm just immature? Dinner is great, but it also seems like what you do before you go do something better, to me anyway. But you play with the hand you're dealt, right? Moving on...
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I’m having a bit of a Facebook issue. Namely, I find it a bit freaky that my Mom and Dad both have Facebook accounts. Really, guys? Shouldn’t you be writing letters in ballpoint pen or calling me on a rotary phone or something, then spending the first couple minutes of it bitching about kids and their new-fangled technology? The friend request from my Mom was a blood-curdling experience. I think I just stared at the screen for about five minutes, and then started desperately searching Facebook for the “LALALA-I’m-covering-my-ears-and-closing-my-eyes-LALALALA” button. I mean how is Mom gonna react, as she peruses the Internets and sips her Sunday-morning coffee (prior to getting ready for church, I might add), to my 3:20 AM post detailing my crack-addled bar dance at Maricón night at the Matador just a couple hours before she woke up? (Editor’s Note: Don is prone to exaggeration) To make matters worse, Dad jumped onto the information superhighway shortly thereafter, giving me two invites I had to pretend I didn’t notice. Finally, I did the only courageous thing one can do in that situation: I created a second Facebook account.We’ll call it my “TV-Y7” account, because kids under 7 really probably shouldn’t be hearing anything I have to say anyway. So now I am friends with Ma and Pa, and I can happily follow their online exploits while still appearing relatively respectable to them. But the SECOND I see one of them rockin’ the “Are YOU Interested?” App, someone is getting pimp-slapped.
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Saw “X-Men: First Class” this weekend, and I have to say it semi-rocked. Even though I absolutely recommend it, I will say that I think I was a victim of my own high hopes/expectations for the movie. I’d give it a solid “B+” rating, and place it at #2 behind “X2: X-Men United” when ranking the X-Men films to date. For the record, the rest of that list would be the first “X-Men” movie at #3, “X-Men: The Last Stand” at #4, and the abysmal “Origins: Wolverine” debacle at #5. I won’t spoil anything regarding the movie, but I do have a couple of observations. Firstly, the decision to bring Matthew Vaughn in as director was nothing short of brilliant. If you’ve seen “Layer Cake” or, more relevantly, “Kick Ass”, you had to know this film was in good hands. “Kick Ass” was absolutely one of my favorite movies of 2010, and that film definitely ramped up my excitement and expectation level for “First Class”. I guess I felt a little bit like the movie had too much story to tell given the time allotted, so things got short-changed. This happens in literally ALL superhero movies, due to the massive comic-book backstories they all have, but for some reason it felt a little more jarring here. I can definitely say I loved the “leads”, Michael Fassbender as Magneto and James McAvoy as Charles Xavier. Fassbender’s coolness carried much of the movie, and there was a “James Bond” feel to some of his parts. If Daniel Craig leaves the Bond franchise for any reason anytime soon, I have no doubt that Fassbender could step nicely into 007’s shoes. And I definitely dug McAvoy’s Professor X-meets-Austin-Powers shtick as the pair rolled through the 60’s. I had some serious concerns about McAvoy as Professor X, but he turned out fine and pretty entertaining at times. I sincerely hope that Vaughn spits out a couple more X-films before he’s through, ideally overwriting the Dark Phoenix storyline that Brett Ratner butchered in X3. Hey, I can dream, right?
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I read that twin brothers who were both Friars died on the same day last week. Is it just me, or does anyone else think that that headline seems ripped straight out of some crappy movie? If nothing else, this surely is giving Arnold some keen ideas for End of Days II. Or maybe even better, one of those craptastic PG-13 haunting/exorcism movies that were coming out approximately weekly back in ’09 or so. Heed the signs, my friends. Heed the signs. In fact, I think I’m off to Family Radio to donate my life savings right now. I’m sure they can use an extra $39.00 to gear up for the next end of mankind..
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Okay, pretty sure i've wasted enough of everyone's time for now. Tune in tomorrow for music day, easily at least the third-best day of the week! Thanks very much for visiting, and have excellent days.
