Like whoa

I'm a pacifist at heart, but this is just a thing of beauty.

A Lesnar match-up is in the cards somewhere down the line, I hope.

A great combination.

Two of my favorite things are Rambo and Bolt Thrower. What happens when you mix them together? It's simple arithmetic, really. Total audio/video carnage. Thank goodness for YouTube and guys with way too much time on their hands, because who knows how long it would have taken me to think this up.

Part I

Part II

This isn't an entire movie. It's about 15 minutes worth of the newest Rambo, covering a few great scenes. If you're going to wuss out, at least watch Part II, which kills right from the beginning.

Seattle Weakly

Today while I was at Lake City Storage, I deftly managed to lock my keys in the car. Stranded, I waited in the office until my dad could drop by with the spare. I found the latest issue of Seattle Weekly sitting on table next to me and decided to peruse it to kill time. Bad idea. Here are some examples of the stupidity I came across (approximate recollections, mind you).

1) The Appleseed Cast have not matched what they did on the Low Level Owl volumes. (Ridiculous pining for indie credibility taking place here. Two Conversations was, and still is, awesome. Not passable or decent. Awesome.)

2) The new Rocky Votolato record, True Devotion, is "ingenious". (Get off the jock. I understand that he's a local boy and deserves our backing. But I can't imagine that anybody who actually spent some time with this album, along with both Makers and The Brag & Cuss, feeling anything but a little underwhelmed. Sorry. The memorable songwriting isn't there. And if that's because it's overshadowed by the prior two classics, tough beans. Doesn't mean we need to pull out a free-praise card.)

3) New Found Glory and The Get Up Kids sound similar. (No. And I like both bands. The closest relation between TGUK and pop-punk is probably second cousin. Yeah, both bands are catchy and have a youthful energy to their sound, but TGUK had the whole second/third wave emo influence - depending on your timeline. Though I will say this: Not Without a Fight = best NFG record to date. Fight me.)

4) In reviewing a split 7" of Narrows/Heiress, only the Narrows material is referenced. (Way to dick a band that could use a little PR. It's only a 7" - not a lot of material to digest. A sentence or two would have been nice. Good or bad. Bad would have been better than a straight snub. Maybe the writers have beef with Pettibone.)

There was some cool stuff in there too, though. I read that there's at least 20 artists from Seattle representing at SXSW this year. Including Ivan & Alyosha. What up Ryan Carbary. I know you think I'm just some heavy metal boner. But I know you probably haven't read The Brothers Karamazov. I also hold all the Never Again material in high esteem, which must surely make you cringe. It's alright. You aren't reading this anyways.

Woe is Howard Jones

I'll admit it. I love me some scandalous music news. Stuff that would be reported in an US Weekly for hardcore and metal; beef between bands, non-amicable breakups and other such happenings. When I was younger, it was a treat to read the never-ending fountain of hilarious garbage which emanated from Fred Durst's mouth - unintentional comedy at its finest ("Lay off the hatorade"). But lately it seems like there hasn't been much drama to go around. The last memorable story I remember was the infamous Canadian border stop of Brain Drill from a couple years back (If you don't know what I'm talking about, definitely check that story here. And if you're too lazy to do that, just know that now whenever the band gets mentioned in an online newsbit, it will be followed by an endless string of comments reading, "They stripped me naked had me lift my ballsack up so they could check underneath it, and then had me bend over and spread my asscheeks apart so they could look inside my asshole.")

Fortunately, Howard Jones of Killswitch Engage has brought back the scene sideshow. Here is the story as reported by ThePRP.

Rumors have been running rampant for weeks now regarding the reason why Killswitch Engage frontman Howard Jones stepped down from the band during the bands current headlining tour. ThePRP has now exclusively learned that Jones temporarily stepped down from his position as a result of allegedly getting pornstar Allie Foster pregnant.

To date Foster’s claims have not been verified publicly by the band themselves. However, the situation looks to have since taken a turn for the worse with Foster posting the following statement on her official Twitter page:

“Howard Jones of Killswitch engage, meet TMZ and your bitter baby momma coming with sweet sweet fuckin revenge you dirtbag.”

Foster also posted a photo of her ‘baby bump’ of what is alleged to be Jones‘ child here. Meanwhile, further postings on Foster’s Twitter account have shed more light on the situation with Foster alleging that she is 4 months pregnant with Jones‘ child. Amongst some other disparaging remarks directed towards Jones, she also revealed that Jones has been insisting on her having an abortion.

Couldn't have scripted it better myself. For the sake of entertainment, let's hope this drags out into a long, ugly mess. Yes, it's terrible that a baby is tied up in this. But the kid's mom is a pornstar, so the inclusion of baggage is a forgone conclusion; I think there's something in the Bible about children inheriting the sins of their parents...oh whatever, for as Vonnegut said, "So it goes."

And just in case you missed the link.


LESSON TO BE LEARNED: If your cheese makes adult films, rawdogging it should never enter into the equation, regardless of the fact that her profession would seem to indicate a comprehension of the pill schedule for birth control. Keep it simple: if a fat guy isn't holding a camera, you aren't in the clear. Better yet: if your cheese makes adult films, it's time to get some new cheese. Try something besides Kraft Singles.

Really now...

(2003)

(2010)

...and that's where the similarities end. One of these bands stepped down when they were still relevant, while the other hasn't been legit in eight years (yes, Good Mourning was solid), continuing to put out uninspired and unexceptional albums (they're not terrible, but worth no more than the cost of a mediafire download).

Experiments with Sleep

I've been slacking on here for a while. School, even though only three days a week, wipes me out and kills any drive to post; I spend enough time in front of a computer doing homework, I tend to afterwards gravitate towards a television to turn my brain off with Fraiser reruns. When I get the urge to write, it's normally reviews for Totally Crushed Out (which is turning out to be a swell little publication). Any of the brief dumb shit I used to post on here now ends up on Facebook. So what will become of of this blog, I'm not sure. I won't delete it. But it will probably deteriorate into sporadic randomness...

...for example, I've developed this habit of going to sleep with my iPod. It's like a nightlight or a stuffed animal for kids. I need it in order to get to sleep. However, it can't do all the work alone; normally I have to read some boring ass Russian literature (right now: Anna Karenina) in order to induce drowsiness. Then it's time for some drone/ambient stuff to nod off to - music that holds a steady equilibrium, without much change in dynamics. Some of my favorites along these lines include Mogwai and Earth.

But lately I've noticed something rather interesting when I've incorporated Sleep's Dopesmoker into this routine. (For those of you who don't know, Sleep were a super-heavy stoner/doom metal band that sounded like Black Sabbath on Qualudes. They featured Matt Pike on guitar, who would go on to form High On Fire.) Dopesmoker is the band's once-canned major label debut, consisting of the title track which clocks in at over an hour, along with a bonus live track titled "Sonic Titan". It is by far away the most effective record in getting me to slumberland. Vocals don't kick in on the title track until around the 20 minute mark and I'm normally long gone by then.

The odd thing is that each time after listening to this album at night, I will wake up the next morning to find my iPod sitting on my bedside table. It's always paused at about 45 seconds into the next track, "Sonic Titan". I never have any recollection of either stopping the music or placing the iPod on the table. This might not seem like much to some, but I'm not one to do things half-asleep. When I'm stirring at the witching hour, I'm normally aware of it. Often when I employ these sleep-inducing tactics with other albums, I'll wake up at some point after they've finished to put my iPod on the bedside table and quickly fall back to sleep, with the ability to recall doing so the following morning. I don't function that way with Dopesmoker and it's beginning to creep me out. It's almost like it works a little too good. I must be taking some sort of subliminal bong hit through my ears in order to more easily reach the REM cycle. Weird stuff.

And while on this subject of falling asleep to music, may I recommend not attempting to do so with Sunn O))). I could go to their live show with earplugs and a sleeping bag and call it good. But I tried to pass out to Monoliths & Dimensions once and was frightfully robbed of a night's rest; seriously, some of the most unsettling audio I've ever come across. That's not to say it's offensive, it's just...ah, I can't describe it. It's just one of those things you don't fool around with in the dark, like chanting "Bloody Mary" in front of the mirror.

TV Letdown

So I, hopefully like the other eight of you, was all excited for a new episode The Office this last week, as it had been a month since the last one aired. Instead of getting an actual episode, we are shafted with a half-assed clip reel sparsely interspersed with original material - none of which was all that memorable. A clip reel? Come on. It's 2010. Fans of the show have either a) purchased the DVD boxsets for each season, b) illegally downloaded the episodes, or c) use to Hulu. Clip reels served a purpose back in the eras of shows like Cheers and Seinfeld, where unless you religiously taped episodes, it would be hard not to miss one here or there. Even with syndication, the scheduling of was too erratic to catch unseen episodes by anything other than dumb luck.

That was then, though. Nowadays, when a show implements a clip reel, it can only mean that writers are running low on ideas. I'm careful not to call them "lazy", because I can only imagine how difficult it is to continually come up with fresh material for 25 episodes a season. So I will place the blame on NBC, who should have just shortened the season by one episode and not tried to pass off this outdated convention as a legitimate entry in the series. I would have much preferred a rerun. But how about doing something different? Interviews. A documentary. Yes, things of this sort have been included on the boxsets, but with varying degrees of quality - the forum set up with the cast (special feature, Season 5 ) was a great idea, but poorly executed, with the audio being a mess.

Again, I will invoke the word "legitimate". That's all I'm asking for here.