INSERT PROLONGED SCREAM HERE

.THERE IS A NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM COMING OUT IN TEN DAYS.

.THERE IS NO FEELING LIKE THE ANTICIPATION OF A NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM - THIS IS MY RECOMMENDATION FOR THIS POST.

.GET REALLY FUCKING EXCITED ABOUT IN RAINBOWS.

.THIS IS LOVE.

Also check out what you can get for 80 big ones:



I know what I want for my birthday.

Shooter

(Combining junk-cultural phenomena with the same name, part 1)

Unfortunately, you might know that "Shooter" was that shitacular political-action-thriller starring everyone's favorite Wahlberg, Danny Glover, and Elias Koteas (aka Casey Jones). (Aside: what happened to Danny Glover? Did he have a stroke or something? His lisp in this movie is unbearable.) Perhaps more fortunately, you might have also heard the Lil Wayne song of the same name, from his album The Carter II, featuring the shitacular spawn of Alan Thicke singing his little soulful blue eyes out.

So, in this world, there are two Shooters. But--now dig this big crux--there are possible worlds where there's only ONE Shooter. That's right, one single shitacular Shooter, the fusion of these two phenomena into one. What's it like? Here's one possibility, called Shooter*:

Shooter* is a feature-length hip-hop musical. A fusion of Lil Wayne and Mark Wahlberg--let's call him Mark Wayne, the most talented actor/rapper imaginable--is set up to be a fall-guy by a fusion of Robin Thicke and Danny Glover--let's call him Danny Thicke. Mark Wayne raps all his lines, and Danny Thicke sings with a terrible lisp: "His hands up / his hands up / we want him with his hands up / this shooter". Elias Koteas is still there, but this time he's fused with some of the hot bitches from the Shooter video in our world, so he looks pretty crazy. The plot twists and turns, and there's lots of action sequences and freestyles....

Etc. etc.

Please suggest other possibilities for fusion.

Representing the hustle,
Dave

Obsessfest 2007

V-lad brings up a good point about the way that traditional print pubs process new media trends. It's all about nailing it down to key terms, no matter how absurd. Blogosphere anyone? Let's phenomenize this shit to pieces! I spent a good deal of time mumbling on paper about what new media can "do" or "say" or any other simplistic action verbs from your favorite first-year foreign language textbook (for me, "Ven Conmigo!"). I came up a little wanting for inspiration but with plenty of questions.

For example, I've been thinking about obsessions. Can obsessions happen in the same way today, when you can't even put a poster on your wall and sing to it like Rivers in the garage without someone flaming you on your myspace profile for your "gay" taste in music? Maybe you can more than ever, like print out your own shitty looking Peter Criss pinup and put your finesse moves on that sonofabitch as you rock out to the great tunes you taped off the radio (ahem--I mean downloaded on iTunes [you would have gotten them illegally but mom and dad didn't want to risk the lawsuit. "Sunk cost," they said and handed over the Visa]). But at least you made the poster, right? You were responsible for its creation, in spite of it being mediated through whatever Google Images came up with and Photoshop's online help documentation.

But anyway, the obsessions. Even after the teen years, you get distracted looking for the next great thing. To quote Fall Out Boy, "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race". All in all maybe I'm just dizzy. But I have found it rewarding to get deeply, deeply into stuff in my life, now and back then, and I'm going to keep trying it out.

Next time I'll suggest something.

so mumblecore

  Recently I read a couple pieces in the NYTimes (on I think consecutive weekends) about young independent filmmakers.  I was intrigued because I like films and I like to be aware of what is happening in the young/indie scenes and I had never heard of any of these fools.  Also the articles used funny terms like "mumblecore" and "slackavetes" to describe commonalities amongst the loose grouping.  All the filmmakers were loathe to be so categorized even though they sort of started it.  My feelings of being left out grew and I was anxious to see some of the source material so I could say "meh, good not great".  
  Cut-to: walking through Harvard sq. to buy coffee and the Brattle theatre has a big Hannah Takes the Stairs poster with all kinds of exclusive engagement nonsense plastered all over it.  Being as my interest was already picqued I totally fell for it and after a week of working and one thwarted attempt (thanks Benno) I peeped it out.  
  As I say I did not want to like a film that fell into the "mumblecore" movement.  I guess they use this term because the characters talk a lot but not in a Woody Allen-stylee, it has more of a "holy shit that's retarded but I have been in some situations that turn out about that astute" feel.  And so I pretty much summed-up why I ended up liking Hannah.  Every painful exchange of late-twenties ennui extends beyond the joke, through the self-importance and into a weirdly sympathetic moment.  I am reminded (slightly) of Todd Solondz in the quickly shifting sympathies.  (IE he's making fun of them oh no wait he's one of them)  Or, and I really didn't want to give them this, a little bit of Cassavetes at least where the length of conversations is concerned.  Cassavetes hits hard because so many scenes play out beyond the lines that would easily define his characters and they get downright awkward.  There's a lot of this in Hannah.  Maybe this plays especially well to me because I am inclined to be above the dilemmas (my job sucks, i wanna be an artist, i'm romantically indecisive) but in the beats after these dilemmas are expressed I realize that I'm not and then what sounds terse 
and stupid becomes pathetic but real.  It's real, it's some real shit.  Wow, so I kind of hate this review/
myself for thinking this way about a movie but I must cop to thiking it was pretty well-done.  
AND I know also that I'm a total sucker for a film that was made cheap/looks cheap/and everybody that's in it gets co-writing credit.  
  On that tip!  I was riding the T home from seeing Yo la Tengo do the Sounds of Science last night 
(maybe i'll write some more about that sometime soon, it was AWESOME) and this scruffy looking youth that I was sitting next to leaned over and said "I know this 
might sound weird but were you in the Nincompoops?"  HAHA  FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME
(he was a friend of Derek Wilson, the brother of one of my co-filmmakers, Andrew/"Norm")

Stalking Writers

One of my favorite things of all time is to read Wikipedia and IMDB.com entries about TV Show writers I admire. I call it "research." A few months ago, I was reading about Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly Kapoor on the American version of The Office, when I discovered she writes AND acts on probably the funniest show on television. She also keeps a tremendous blog: mindyephron.blogspot.com. Her tone is really girly, and it's hard to imagine her writing lines for anyone but Kelly, yet she managed to write the very funny The Dundies episode from Season 1.* My general dislike of female comediens does not extend to smart, hilarious ladies like Mindy. She went to Dartmouth and wrote a two women play after graduating called Matt and Ben (Damon and Affleck respectively). From there, she was recruited to write for The Office. She's livin' the dream - specifically, my dream. I also like the premise of her blog. The entries are simple, short, and really fun to read. The title is Things I've Bought That I Love, and her entries detail exactly that. Sure, the conceit is pretty superficial and materialistic, but then again, I'm from LA, so who am I to judge?

- Celeste

*EDIT: Apparently The Dundies were from Season 2. I watched both seasons in the span of oh, 4 days, so I have no concept of Seasonage.

What hoods?

(New Haven, Boston, Austin.)

The blog is up and running! And since Austin is titularly represented (Spoon), I'm going to devote my first post to sharing this link from the Austinist.

Just a taste (pun intended) of Austin culture.