Evidently I'm this:

Which David Bowie are you?

which is pretty funny, because I thought for sure I'd end up as the Modern Love-Era Bowie. If you can't see the link, I'm the Berlin Era-Bowie, which evidently means giving up drugs and making records with Eno and Iggy.

Hey...

Click Me~!

(link stolen from Lileks)

Forgot my material for the evening.

I was going to do a bit about the somewhat ridiculous Blender 50 Worst Songs list, but I left my Blender at work, so that's out the window, save for the observation that someone at Blender's on the crack pipe.

Instead, a bit of random hit stuff:

In the midst of a rip/burn project much like MaestroKen. I've ripped something like 100 CDs so far and haven't yet scratched the surface of all the stuff in my collection. I did make a saweeet MP3 cd for my car with seven Blind Guardian CD's and four of the five Orange Goblin CDs. (Brendan informs me that I didn't get the first one from him.) I have yet to get through the Zappa CDs. I figure that'll be 6 or 7 MP3 CD's worth of material in themselves.

Thinking about a DVD burner for my computer. There are some good crack and shrink programs out there, and I don't necessarily need all these DVD's with crappy packaging and no liner notes. (Paramount and Warner are particularly egregious when it comes to this sort of thing.) So I figure I can rip, burn and sell. Dell loves me at the moment credit-wise, so perhaps a purchase is in order.

Picked up the new Prince CD last weekend. Musicology is a nice return to form for the Purple Wonder, who has mellowed out a great deal, apparently. He's a Witness now, and happily married, and the new album seems to reflect a much less sexual Prince, if nothing else. The best tracks on the album are the title track, sort of a "Sweet Soul Music" for the new generation in which Prince raves about Earth Wind and Fire and Jam Master Jay, and "Cinnamon Girl"(not a Neil Young cover), a rocker about a multi-racial girl in the post 9/11 world. You could certainly do worse then picking up this CD.

ENOUGH WITH THE JAY-Z MIXES ALREADY~! i admit that I've downloaded all of them, from the Double Black Album (Jay-Z/Metallica) to the Slack Album (Jay-Z/Pavement). But can we please pick someone else to direct all this wonderful creative remixing energy towards? (not that I have any ideas who could be next, but come on already.)

My new game makes Get Fuzzy.

Over the weekend, I bought EA Sports' Rugby 2004 for the PC. I'm enjoying it, though I've not gotten very far into it. I'm still trying to learn the basics of gameplay. This morning, when I got my daily comic e-mail, Get Fuzzy hit close to home.



Of course, I'm nowhere near where Rob is in the game. One of the things I've always liked about Get Fuzzy is the occasional rugby joke that comes out of nowhere. Evidently, Darby Conley is a big rugby fan.

Elle Wiz also pointed this out on her blog. Figured I'd mention that so she doesn't yell at me for ripping her off. (Just kidding, LW.)

Brief Raw thoughts...

Raw is pretty much in neutral right now, with 6 weeks until the next PPV. Benoit and Edge kept the tag belts for another week, which still makes me nervous about them pulling the belt off him next week against HBK. They're setting up Orton for a run against Shelton Benjamin, who absolutely KILLED Orton with a clothesline tonight. Beyond that, not much happened, save for setting up the first match of Eugene, two weeks from tonight against Rob Conway. I suspect that we're going to find out that Eugene is an idiot savant when it comes to wrestling, as he had a brief Rain Man moment tonight on commentary with JR and the King.

Blah. PPV can't come soon enough, especially since I can't fathom SD! these days.

Two different kinds of heavyweight action...

Day off today, so Laurene and I spent the better part of the afternoon watching Food Network's Iron Chef America special. I've always been a big Iron Chef fan. There's just something innately interesting to me about watching two chefs trying to make the most elaborate dishes they can in less then an hour using an ingredient that they've never seen before. I've been a rabid IC fan for about four years now, and I was interested to see how the Food Network's American version would compare to the original. (We won't speak of the campy attempt by UPN to replicate the show with Bill Shatner.)

Not surprisingly, the American version hangs pretty close to the Japanese original. This may be because Food Network doesn't want to offend the fans of its cash cow(many ads ran during the five hours worth of shows for various IC tie-in products), but it also may be that the Food Network also wanted to pay tribute to a ratings mainstay.

One of the more entertaining things about the original IC was Chairman Kaga, the flamboyant "millionaire cuisine afficionado who built Kitchen Stadium". As played by Japanese actor Takeshi Kaga, the Chairman is a flamboyant, over the top guy who reeeeeeally likes food. (Kaga got his start in the theater, where according to his IMDb bio, he was the first Japanese to play Tony in West Side Story, Jesus in Superstar, and Jean Valjean in Les Miz). Kaga set the tone for the show by introducing the participants and announcing the ingredient, then starting things with a hearty shout of "Allez Cuisine!". His American equivalent, simply called the Chairman, is played by martial artist and B-movie hero Mark Dacascos. Dacascos introduces himself as the nephew of Chairman Kaga, and tells us that his uncle now considers the US worthy of our own Iron Chef. Now, I'm a big Dacascos fan, but he's not nearly as good as Kaga.

Alton Brown, the host of FN's Good Eats is the host of the show, and seems to be playing the roles of both Fukui-san and Hattori-san, as there is no second chair commentator. He does a good job of it, conveying a general sense of what's going on and also showing off some of his own food knowledge. There's a roving reporter, whose name I have forgotten, but unlike Shinichiro Ohta, he does not frantically interrupt Brown, but rather calmly waits for his chance to interject. It's IC, but it's not.

The American Iron Chefs are Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, and IC veteran Bobby Flay, who had two contentious battles with Iron Chef Japanese Masaharu Morimoto on the original IC. Flay went one and one with Morimoto, but twice managed to offend the Japanese with his, well, Americanness. The Japanese Iron Chefs are Iron Chef French Hiroyuki Sakai and Iron Chef Japanese Morimoto. The matches are as follows.

Flay vs. Sakai, with the secret ingredient being Trout. Flay wins in a decision that's not as close as the tasting segment would indicate.

Morimoto vs. Batali, with the ingredient being Spiny Lobster. Batali wins, and I'm sensing a trend here. Morimoto's dishes are the same kind of material that he did on IC, but the American judges seem to be having a hard time with it. This will become a bigger factor in the next match,

Morimoto vs. Puck, with the ingredient being various kinds of Eggs. This includes ostrich eggs, which are very large, very gooey, and apparently, a very good ingredient for ice cream. Puck wins, which should be obvious from the fact that Vincent "Big Pussy" Pastore doesn't seem to want to like any of Morimoto's dishes, save for a Kobe Beef Sukiyaki served at the table.

The final match is a Tag Team battle, with the interesting twist of teaming Flay and Morimoto vs. Sakai and Batali. The ingredients are about a half dozen different kinds of fish, including Sea Urchins and Langostines. The whole match, Brown seems to be concerned about Flay and Morimoto working together, but they obviously don't have any problems, as they beat Sakai and Batali fairly easily.

Overall, the American IC is a lot of fun, though not as much fun as the Japanese version, and here's hoping Food Network decides to start doing it on a regular basis.

I also finally got around to watching the Klitschko-Sanders fight from Saturday night. A few weeks back, I complained here about the alphabet soup nature of modern boxing, and this fight was certainly no exception. This fight is for the WBO championship, and is the last of four heavyweight fights in three weeks for belts. The difference here is that the winner of this fight could probably lay the most legitimate claim for heavyweight contender of the world. Let's look at the other contenders real quick.

Lamon Brewster: Beat Wlad Klitschko on 4/10 on HBO to vault into contention. Took advantage of Klitschko's tiredness to beat him, and now Wlad's camp is suggesting that their cutman accidentally sabotaged the match.(Larry Merchant more or less disputed this idea short of actual corroboration.) Not really a contender. Holds the WBO belt.

John Ruiz: WBA champ. Terrible fighter. Shaddax has a apt description of Ruiz's style in his post of a week ago regarding the Ruiz/Oquendo fight. Let's just say the word cheater is used a lot.

Chris Byrd: IBF champ, fought to a draw with Andrew (Low Blow) Golota on the same card with Ruiz last Saturday. Made the rounds of both ESPN's Friday Night Fights and the HBO broadcast, basically campaigning for a shot at the winner of Klitschko/Sanders. Probably the best of the three contenders.

Klitschko-Sanders was not a great fight by any stretch of the imagination, but Vitali Klitschko is definitely the heavyweight champion of the world going forward. Klitschko pretty much dominated the fight from the second round on, after Sanders came out swinging in the first. By the fourth round, Sanders was basically walking around the ring taking punches, trying to get one big punch in. In the seventh, Sanders attempted a comeback, but it was cut short in the eighth, as Vitali pounded him up and down until the ref stopped the bout.

What the division really needs is a new Mike Tyson or Ali, someone who will catch the collective imagination of boxing fans and carry the sport to the next level. Right now, that's a long way from happening.

Why MST3K wasn't a solo act...

Brought home the new DVD of the classic anti-drug propoganda film Reefer Madness this weekend. An outfit called Legend Films took it, colorized it, and brought Mike Nelson, former host of MST3K, in to do a commentary track. Interesting idea, but I didn't think the commentary track was all that great, sort of like Mike doing his MST thing without the robots. Too much dead space between the funny stuff, and it would have been better to give Mike someone to play off of. The film itself doesn't really benefit from the colorization, though I'm not particularly big on the process myself. To me, the colors never look right, and always seem like they're slapping a pastel palette on rather then naturalistic colors.

Also watched Baba Yaga this weekend. In my previous post about the joys of Blue Underground, I said this:

Baba Yaga, also known as Kiss Me, Kill Me, is based on a comic book by legendary Italian adult comic artist Guido Crepax, and is about witches and murder and lesbianism and S&M. This one also promises eye-popping erotic extras, and we'll see about that also.

Well, it was certainly different. Blue Underground's copy turns out to be somewhat hyperbolic. Corrado Farina's adaptation of Crepax's Valentina falls into that strange zone of Eurosleaze somewhere between Hammer's early 70's attempts to be cool and the over the top, unfathomable, plotless sleazefests of Jess Franco. The plot, such as it is, concerns Valentina, a hipper-then-thou fashion photographer who becomes entangled with a mysterious witch, and falls into a nightmarish world where reality and fantasy are confusingly one. From what I could gather of a somewhat obtuse doc on Crepax that BU included on the disc, the film is actually about as close as anyone's ever going to get to putting Crepax's work on the screen. Farina's film has style to spare, and uses some interesting techniques to approximate Crepax's art style on screen, which makes up for it being somewhat light on the sleaze promised on the box. Even the "never before seen erotic outtakes" promised on the box amount to about 35 seconds of nudity and 9 minutes of nonsense that was better left on the cutting room floor. The only exception is an amusing cameo from Crepax himself, in which he suggests that he has sold out in order to make more money. Readers of Heavy Metal over the years would beg to differ. One other thing that must be mentioned is the fine score, which is a pulsating, post-Morricone pre-Goblin, jazz-postbop-rock score by Piero Umiliani, who might best be known for having written the "Mah-na, Mah-na" song that any Muppet or Benny Hill fan knows. Farina is interviewed on the disc, but does not mention why he never made another film after Baba Yaga. Too bad, that. This film is certainly near the level of Argento, and well above many of his more prolific contemporaries.

Tomorrow, Iron Chef America and Raw thoughts.

R.I.P. Pat Tillman

One thing that you'll rarely if ever find in this blog is political material. If you want that, you can either go to Lileks or read Lara's blog for a more liberal slant on things. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention the passing of Pat Tillman, the 27-year-old former Arizona Cardinal who gave up an NFL career in order to serve his country following 9/11. Tillman and his brother Kevin, a former minor leaguer in the Indians organization, both became Army Rangers and were serving in Afghanistan. Tillman was apparently killed during a fierce firefight in a Taliban controlled area of eastern Afghanistan. For more on the story, you can go here.

Now I'm not a very political person by nature. My politics tend to lean slightly left of center, but on Afghanistan, I believe that we're there for a good reason. Pat Tillman did too, and unfortunately, he paid the ultimate price for the freedom of his country. You could argue that the only reason we're talking about him is because he used to play in the NFL, but were he just another anonymous soldier killed in the war, he'd still be someone who died for his country.

In my book, that makes him a hero.

Spam Poetry.

This was part of a refinancing pitch.

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Actual content later, maybe.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

Ed Wilson is a god.

More likely, I'm a big dumb guy.

All that worrying and it turns out that I was simply breeding a dust colony inside my PC. No new system needed, just some compressed air and a vacuum. But I did end up putting a new video card in here, and Ed assures me that I can at least swap out the CD burner for a DVD one and also upgrade the ram as far as 2 GB if I really want to(at $250, that's for another time.)

But anyway, again, thanks go out to both Ed Wilson, my CompUSA hookup, and also Kev Wagner, who was an amazing fount of information on how to get some of the clutter out of my system.

Back with the usual pop culture nonsense tomorrow. I've got the new DVD of "Reefer Madness" with a commentary by Mike Nelson of MST3K to watch.

Computer woes, day 2

Most likely no post tomorrow (Wednesday proper), as I am taking the computer to see my boy Brendan's brother at CompUSA. I'm guessing that the motherboard is going, as has been suggested by both Kev Wagner and Brendan's brother, so I suspect I'll be in the market for a computer by, oh, Thursday or so.

Fark.

Computer woes...

If you notice a sudden and hopefully temporary lack of blogging sometime in the next few weeks, rest assured that I am not giving this up. My piece of crap EMachines computer is apparently on its last legs. The CPU starts running at 100% after 20 or 25 minutes of use, and sometimes will not stop even after a restart. I don't appear to have a virus unless it's something really unusual, I think the computer's just tired. Any suggestions anyone might have would help, though I suspect it's the motherboard. I'm hoping it will hold out long enough so that when I get another system, I can transfer off the 20 or so gigs of music that are on the hard drive, which is all I really care about.

Anyway, nice day off today despite the Yankees dropping another game to the hated Sox. Watched some boxing and two episodes of Penn and Teller:Bullshit, and spent quite a bit of time playing with my daughter.

Watching Raw now. Pretty damn good show off the PPV, though they're gonna tease us for two weeks with the one on one HBK/Benoit matchup. More "You screwed Bret" chants for HBK tonight, as Benoit cut an impressive promo about Stu Hart (without, unless I'm mistaken, actually mentioning the Hitman). More fun with Eugene, as he shot poor Regal in the balls with one of those T-Shirt airguns, and there was some nonsense involving Kane talking some crap about sacrifices or something. I guess they're gonna try to push the supernatural angle with him again. Molly Holly is apparently now insane, as she snapped on Victoria after Vicki accidentally pulled her wig off. It was an okay show, but nothing to write home about. ME is going on as I type this. It's Edge/Benoit vs. Naitch/DAVE and now the Roided Arsebiscuit(tm Pato(ITVR)) has joined the fun at ringside. They're really trying hard to push Evolution as some kind of Horsemen/NWO thing, but it's getting old and annoying now. Benoit just did his version of a Flair Flop, which was pretty funny. Holy crap, Benoit and Edge just won the tag titles. Where's Bischoff to take them away? Wonder if this means they'll take the Big Gold Belt off of Benoit in two weeks?

Hmmm.

Muggs Eye For The Queer Guy...

I watch PPVs every month with my man Thom, and every month, it's a contest to see what's better, the matches or the running show commentary in the room. Tonight was no exception. The PPV was good but eminently forgettable, save for the Foley/Orton match and the main event. I think I need to get a tape recorder or something, though, because I always end up forgetting most of the good stuff.

I did remember the aforementioned new TV show, Muggs' Eye for The Queer Guy. This, of course, would be sweatpants, t-shirts(wrestling or concerts), baseball cap, Chuck Taylor All-Stars, and Old Spice. Lots of Old Spice. No colognes or designer labels, and no regard for fashion trends. Turn your guy from gay to straight in no time at all. (Note, baseball cap does not mean Ironic Trucker Hat, because of course, that would be trendy.) By the way, I am the second most queerest straight guy I know. (Thom's the first.)

Overall, the PPV was okay. Some thoughts:

Someone had a Go Whalers sign in the crowd. As the Hurricane would say, whasupwidat?

Benjamin/Flair: Not a bad match but short, and Flair seemed to go to the staples REAL early. We had the flop about 45 seconds into the match. Surprisingly, no DAVE run-in, a trend that would echo throughout the night.
Coach/Tajiri: Crap. Plain and simple. And why is Garrison Cade helping Coach, and more importantly, why does he seem to want to be the second coming of David Flair lookwise?

Ironically, the Fanatic ad is for "The Stone Cold Truth".

Jericho/Christian/Trish: This was okay, forgettable, but not bad. No Lita run-in, like expected, and as we'd soon see, the Monday night Trish/Lita beef seems to have been for naught.
Victoria/Lita: Only one blown Lita spot, but boy did she look slow. Thom's wife wondered about the neon green hanky in Lita's back pocket, which led to speculation about Lita's preferences. Vickie wins, thankfully sparing us a Lita title reign.

The ads for the SD~! PPV look really bad. I could care less about Bradshaw as contender. Seriously.

Orton/Foley: Holy shit. Match of the night to be sure, and Orton bumped like a champ but still didn't take the worst of it. Nice to see that someone besides Foley gets backdropped on the tacks. Thought for sure we'd see some Evolutionference, since the stip keeping them away from the match only said ringside. Again, Vince and Johnny Ace seemed content to allow the members of Evolution to succeed on their own.(A good decison, that.) My one beef was with the Bischoff appearance to stop Foley from lighting the barbed wire baseball bat on fire. Loud ECW and Holy Shit chants during this.

Bonus match: La Res/Hurricane/Rosey: Time-killer apparently, and also served to push the Eugene vs La Res storyline(such as it is) along. Nothing to see here.

Kane/Edge: This was pretty dumb, as the added stip from Monday night virtually guaranteed Edge a victory. Bleah.
HHH/HBK/Benoit: Great match, even with the ref bump. Big chants of "You Tapped Out" for HHH, "Let's Go Benoit", and as usual for a Canadian crowd, "You Screwed Bret" chants at Earl Hebner and HBK.(It's been 7 years. Let it GO~!) Nice to see Benoit hold the title for more then a month, and what's up with Trip's hair? He looks almost Jericho-like with the feathered 'do.

Overall, not a bad show, but save Foley/Orton and the ME, not something I necessarily need to see again.

Austin goes bye bye, and thoughts on the PPV.

So I get home tonight and go to ITVR to find the following statement in the Wrestling section.

WWE and Steve Austin part ways

After months of negotiations, the WWE and Steve Austin have been unable to come to terms on a new contract and as a result have mutually agreed to part company. Both parties have left the door open to work together again in the future and the WWE wishes Steve the very best in his future endeavors.

The article from WWE.com can be found here, and thanks to Jaygo for posting this on the board. Read his blog, damnit.

Austin and the WWE, according to the intramanet dirt sheets, were far away on a contract. The chief issue was rumored to be the rights to the "Stone Cold" character and the use of the name in non-WWE projects. Austin's recent domestic issues also appear to have been a factor. Things being what they are, I don't see this as a major loss. They'll lose some casual fans, but maybe this gives someone a shot at a couple of minutes of TV time they might not otherwise have gotten. It's not like he was going to wrestle on a regular basis. Yun from ITVR sums it up best:

Hell, I didn't like Austin even when he could wrestle. Actually I remember the exact moment when he went from mere dislike to blind "Get this dipshit off my TV, please" hatred. It was during Foley's reign as commissioner, when Austin attacked the (babyface) commissioner, and the fans got mad at FOLEY when he got a little peeved about it. And then after the first brand split when Austin kept stunnering Flair for no apparant reason and in the end Flair was the one who turned heel even though he was completely justified in his hatred of Austin.

In wrestling we're supposed to boo the agressors and show support for the innocent victims. Austin killed that in America, it's why some people make a distinction between "heels" and "rudos."

So in short, goodbye, good riddance, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

PPV predictions:

Main Event - HHH/Benoit/Michaels Redux: I see this going as Benoit retaining by pinning HBK, hopefully igniting a decent feud that can carry the main event until Summerslam. The last thing that Raw needs is another endless HHH title run.

Foley/Orton, No Holds Barred, Falls Count Anywhere, Evolution banned from ringside: Orton will win, keeping the belt, but will probably get beat pretty solidly for his trouble. But I also figure that Foley will take the worse abuse, because he's Foley.

Vickie/Lita, Women's Title: Vickie probably retains, maybe with help from Trish, depending on where this match ends up falling in the show.

Jericho/Christian & Trish: Hopefully Trish won't be much of a factor, and I'm pretty sure Jericho's gonna go over. I can't see them running this storyline through the summer.

Benjamin/Flair: Man, this should be good. Flair could carry me to a *** match, and I suspect that he and Benjamin will go all out. Benjamin should win, but Flair will give him a match to remember.

Edge/Kane: Who cares? Edge, in all his newfound Balco-ness, will win, but no one will care.

Coach/Tajiri: Tajiri wins a joke match, then hopefully decides to follow Ultimo back to Japan so that he can get booked in decent matches. If there's one wrestler on the WWE roster that would benefit from some version of ECW restarting, Tajiri is it.

Giant robots and some important reading on the subject of piracy and the intramanet...

I'm an anime freak, but I prefer the giant robot type to the naughty tentacle type. One of my recent favorites is ADV's RahXephon, and today I picked up the first Viz collection of the RahXephon manga. It's certainly different from the show. The story revolves around the usual anime tropes. Evil aliens are trying to take over the earth and only one high schooler and his giant robot can save the day. This one though, is closer to Evangelion then Gigantor though, as it revolves around a mythology involving music and aliens who want to "tune" our planet to a higher form of evolution.

I've watched the entire 26 episode run and am eagerly awaiting ADV's release of the RahXephon movie, though I understand it's more a retelling of the first couple of episodes. But Viz's comic is another matter entirely. It seems to follow a different arc in regards to characters while keeping the story more or less the same, and there's quite a bit more fan service(female leads in scanty clothing) in the comic then the anime. But for $9.95 for the equivalent of 5 issues, it's certainly worth it.

In closing you need to read this. It's the first part of an online book in progress from p2p.net detailing the ways that the entertainment industry is trying to control what you do and how you do it, and also trying to grab private and personal information on you - without your knowledge or permission. So go read it. And read some of the stories hyperlinked in the story. The best way to keep yourself safe is to keep yourself informed.

Not much.

Nothing much to say today, nothing on my mind. Yankees won, and the Flyers are on the verge of purging the hated Swamp Dwellers from the playoffs, so it's a good night.

Too much rain and not enough sleep.

More on the potential crackdown on one of my favorite things.

Interesting view of the Justice department's potential campaign here. It's a column written by a libertarian law professor and think tanker from the Cato institute, who has some chilling thoughts on where the crackdown might end up. (Link snagged from Daze Reader.)

Also some interesting though NSFW reading follows from AVN, the online bible of the adult video industry.
Larry Flynt takes issue with some of the comments made by Rob Black in the Reason article I linked last week, and Black replies here. Lot of turmoil in the industry lately, though it's not hard to understand.

Yanks got rained out tonight, so my rotisserie stats are almost non-existant. Course, my team sucks this year anyway, so oh well.

Raw thoughts...

Raw was a decent if unspectacular show tonight. Good main event, sold the PPV pretty well, and lots of Foley, which makes me happy.

Quick thoughts: Apparently, Jerry Lawler's been kissing Johnny Ace's ass really well, because WWE has rehired Brian "Grandmaster Sexay" Lawler back. It'll be interesting to see how long until he ends up back together with Scotty.

Much plugging of the ME tonight, with three seperate taped promos from the participants. Much of the same nonsense.

Eugene was back tonight, distracting La Resistance enough to cost them a match. I see a lame match between Grenier and Eugene next Monday night.

Great promo work by Foley tonight, and a great video package showing how hardcore Mick is. Of course he won't win on Sunday, because they're not gonna hang the IC belt on him.

Predictions later in the week.

Day off and one hit wonders...

Home today because of working on the weekend. Womenfolk are asleep, and I was going to watch Master and Commander which we got a week and a half early at the video store, but I got distracted by MTV2.

They're running an old episode(two or three years old, I'd guess, based on the "current" references) of Ultrasound about the One-Hit Wonder trend of the 90s. Some of it is pretty funny, as when they discuss Right Said Fred and Vanilla Ice. Some of it's pretty sad because some of the one-hit wonders should have had better careers. Right now they're talking about the post-grunge one hit wonder rock bands, like Ugly Kid Joe and Marcy Playground. Other topics they've covered include the brief 90's white rapper trend(interesting side note on that below), and the inexplicable rise of dance pop psuedo-disco. (Disco never really died, it just went from disco to garage to club to dance pop).

Ooooohhh. Screaming Trees.

Okay, quick list: Top 10 favorite one hit wonder songs of the 90s(in no particular order)

Seven Mary Three - Cumbersome - Post-grunge rock with a great hook.
Porno For Pyros - Pets - Hard to consider Perry Farrell a one hit wonder, but P4P never really went anywhere.
Snow - Informer - Come on, admit it. In 1993, you were trying to sing this one too.
Len - Steal My Sunshine - Built on a hook stolen from Andrea True's "More More More", inescapable in the summer of 1999, probably the most catchy Canadian brother/sister duo song ever.
Spacehog - In The Meantime - great rock song, and the lead singer's married to Liv Tyler now.
Sir Mix A Lot - Baby Got Back - I don't think I need to defend this one.
Green Jello - Three Little Pigs - Great claymation video by a band that thought it was Gwar, got sued by Nabisco, and vanished as quicky as they appeared.
Onyx - Slam - great hook, great chorus, great remix with Biohazard.
Toadies - Possum Kingdom - hooky, creepy, and unmistakably 90s.
Deelite - Groove Is In The Heart - Like Vogue, the accidental crossover of NYC club culture to the pop charts, but catchy fun. Bonus points for involving Bootsy.

Man, I'd forgotten about some of this stuff, like Young Black Teenagers and Skee-Lo and Concrete Blonde. It's amazing that any of the bands that started in the 90's made it out of the decade in one piece.

Okay, now the white rap thing. Recently in the Times, there was a story about Green-Wood cemetary in Brooklyn(I think), a cemetary where many of the original creators of baseball are interred. One of the people interviewed in the article was 37-year-old Peter Nash, who is spearheading a preservation drive for Green-Wood. Peter Nash is a businessman and curator of a traveling baseball memorabilia exhibit who lives in Cooperstown. Ordinary? Well, he would be, except that once upon a time, he used to be called Pete Nice, and was one of the members of 3rd Bass, the 90's white rap act chiefly known for their ironic one hit wonder hit Pop Goes The Weasel. The song was an attack on Vanilla Ice(lampooned in the video by Hank Rollins) and MC Hammer, 90's one hit wonders, but it turned out to be a one-hit wonder for third bass also.

Back after Raw, maybe.

*EDIT* - I'm back. Subsequently, I found that the date on the show was 1999, so the "current" stuff was reeeeeeallly not current. Funny bit at the end, as they discuss how bands sometimes get labelled as one hit wonders too soon, and after discussing Semisonic(who expressed hope they wouldn't become a one-hit band), they showed some of 1999's one-hitters who they wondered would still be around afterwards. One of them was Christina Agiulera, then running on "Genie In A Bottle." No sign of Britney, though. And I forgot Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta" on that favorites list.

Happy Easter, everyone~!

Whirlwind day today, so I doubt I'll get much of anything posted. If you want a better analysis of the fights then I posted, go read Shad's blog that I've linked in last night's post.

Laterz.

Boxing on a Saturday night...

Watching boxing as I type this. HBO is between fights at the moment, and I thought I'd take a page from my boy Shaddax and go round by round on Wladimir Klitschko vs. Lamon Brewster.

The opening fight was a welterweight match between Zab Judah and unified champion Cory Spinks. Spinks is the son of Leon and a decently talented fighter, facing Judah who is coming up in weight. Spinks dominated the early going, but obviously wasn't a knockout puncher. Judah, smaller and quicker on the jab, punished Spinks in the middle rounds, but let him back into the fight by turning his back in the 9th. In the 11th, Spinks got a fluky knockdown on Judah, seemingly getting himself back into the fight, but in the 12th, Judah got a solid knockdown back, hurting Spinks pretty bad, but not getting the KO. In the end, Spinks won a unanimous decision that HBO's judge had as a draw, and which I saw as Judah winning the fight. But then, I'm not a fight expert, so there you go.

Round one of this fight has Klitschko pretty much opening up on Brewster. Brewster looks like he's a sparring partner, not an opponent, and Klitschko looks like he's trying to exorcise the demons of Corrie Sanders, who knocked him out 13 months ago. Klitschko's brother, Vitali, a heavyweight himself, will be facing Sanders in two weeks, also on HBO.

Round two starts as more of the same, but Brewster comes alive a bit, trying to use Klitschko's body. Klitschko looks like one of the fighters from the old Punch Out! game for the NES, just standing up there punching away. Better round for Brewster, but still 2-0 Klitschko. After two rounds Klitschko has landed 45 punches as opposed to 8 for Brewster.

Round three starts with Larry Merchant warning that Klitschko should be careful not to tire out, as though he expects this to go to a decision. Slugging here, but also sloppiness. Brewster appears to be able to take some abuse though, as he's taken a few hard punches from Klitschko and kept going. Brewster probably pulled this one out, and Lederman agrees, giving the round to Brewster.

What a shitty fight so far. By the way, HBO should find a way to keep Emmanuel Steward and get rid of Roy Jones. Jones is decent as commentator, but Steward is much more opinionated and similar to George Foreman.

Round four, more of the same, punch, punch, grab. But Brewster just went down. and that may be it, as he just went down again. But Brewster gets up and just keeps punching. Heh. Brewster just took Klitschko down WWE style. Definitely a 10-7 round for Klitschko.

As round five starts, Merchant says that only one knockdown counted in the fourth. Jesus, Brewster just keeps taking punches. Klitschko is BLOWN UP(tm ITVR) and Brewster just took advantage and got a standing 8 on Klitschko. This fight is now a lot better.

Holeee shit. The ref just stopped the fight. Your winner by TKO, Lamon Brewster. Klitschko went down after the bell and he was so dazed that the ref called it. Lampley and Merchant are suggesting that Klitschko's career is over. Klitschko was ahead, and Brewster just turned on the gas. Wonder if Vitali will feel he has to avenge this loss after he's done with Corrie Sanders. Lampley points out that Brewster won in a fight in which he got his ass whipped but good.

Merchant just shouted down a bunch of Brewster's boys who were yelling behing the interview. Funny stuff. Brewster notes that he knew Klitschko was huffing and puffing after two and he knew he would win, that Klitschko would have to "kill me to beat me" even after the fourth round knockdown. Not a bad fight night on HBO overall.

Days of Thunder, low budget Canadian style...

I just got a stack of new Blue Underground DVDs in a sort of fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck way. (Don't ask.) Blue Underground is probably, if not my favorite DVD distributor out there, then a solid second. (Anchor Bay is still first, but BU is catching up). I got:

Larry Cohen's Bone, a sort of pseudo-Blaxploitation effort with Yahpet Kotto as a criminal who invades a white Beverly Hills couple's estate and makes them face the lies and illusions in their life(or so the box says.) Larry Cohen is the man responsible for unleashing It's Alive, Q The Winged Serpent, and oddly enough, Phone Booth on the world.

A trio of Jess Franco films is next. Eugenie is DeSade filtered though the 1960s, and features Christopher Lee, obviously slumming for a paycheck as he did through much of the late 60's and early 70's. It purports to be erotic, but the trailer makes it out to be more of the European near-porn of the time. The Girl From Rio is a whacked out Barbarella ripoff that is allegedly based on characters created by Sax Rohmer, the creator of Fu Manchu. George Sanders is the one slumming in this one. The box promises eye-popping nudity and torture. We'll see about that. The third movie also features Christopher Lee, slumming again. The Bloody Judge is one of several 1700's-era evil-witchhunter-torturing-virgins pictures that haunted the bottom half of double bills in the late sixties, and even Lee is quoted on the box as saying the film features "scenes of extraordinary depravity". Hey, anything for a paycheck, right?

Baba Yaga, also known as Kiss Me, Kill Me, is based on a comic book by legendary Italian adult comic artist Guido Crepax, and is about witches and murder and lesbianism and S&M. This one also promises eye-popping erotic extras, and we'll see about that also.

Sergio Corbucci's Django, a classic spaghetti western starring Franco Nero that spawned over 50 unofficial sequels. Chances are, if you saw a 70's Italian western not starring Clint Eastwood, it was a retitled Django sequel. Anchor Bay had had this one out in the late 90's, but BU found a copy of the original camera negative that had been in a Rome film vault for three decades. I can't recommend this movie enough if you like spaghetti westerns.

Salon Kitty is a strange animal. Directed by Tinto Brass, the poor bastard who has to carry the director's credit on Caligula for all eternity, the movie purports to be a true story about a Nazi brothel in 1939. Long available in various heavily censored versions, BU has released an elaborate 2 disc effort with 2 doucmentaries and DVD-Rom features, and featuring the complete unedited version of the movie from Brass' own personal print. It's bizarre, bizarre, bizarre.

And last, but far from least, is the film described by today's post title. Fast Company is a pretty standard, nothing special racing picture starring John Saxon and William Smith. It's a movie of the type that you would have seen on HBO or The Movie Channel around 1983 or so. It's about a drag racer(Smith) at odds with his sponsor's representative(Saxon) over his getting old and wanting to win races. At one point, Saxon upbraids Smith's mechanic for trying to win so hard that their ride blows up. "Winning costs the company too much," he tells the mechanic. "The important thing is keeping him running just enough so that they(the fans) still like him, and buy our product." Saxon is pretty much a cookie cutter bad guy, who resorts to sabotage to get what he wants, and ultimately pays the price. It's a decent enough film, but would hardly be the sort of film that deserves the treatment BU is giving it, but for one thing.

It's directed by David Cronenberg. Filmed between Rabid and The Brood, it was Cronenberg's attempt to make a more straightforward film that might get him some recognition, and therefore some money. But because of a distribution snafu, it was barely released in the US and has been virtually unavailable since 1979. Cronenberg considers it one of the most important films of his career, though I'm hardpressed to see why. (Once I listen to the commentary track, perhaps I'll understand why.) The disc features a funny 11 minute interview with Saxon and Smith and an interesting interview with DP Mark Irwin, who discusses shooting on a shoestring with Cronenberg and his subsequent work with the director. BU has also included a second disc that features Cronenberg's first two films, Stereo, and Crimes of the Future, which I have not watched yet, but supposedly show the beginnings of Cronenberg's obsessions with technology and the human body.

Overall not a bad haul. If you're interested in these movies, you can go here and look at BU's site, which is somewhat NSFW, but contains ordering info, trailers, and previews for virtually all of their releases. I recommend The Final Countdown, George Romero's The Crazies, and Dead and Buried, a classic early 80's slasher flick from the guys that wrote Alien. BU is close to passing Anchor Bay as the premier cult DVD distributor.

Why Roger Ebert rocks my face...

My boy Hogie over at ITVR pointed me in the direction of this list. Now you'll recall(or you can scroll down to it) that I took CHUD to task for a list of underrated movies last week. This is the list, right here. You should go to your video store of choice or Netflix and get as many of these movies as you can if you want to truly appreciate some great filmmaking. The list is a couple of years old, but every movie on it is essential viewing.

Now, normally I don't care for Roger. I personally think that he and the late Gene Siskel simplified movie criticism way too much with the thumb rating system. Nowadays, the first thing you see at the top of a newspaper ad or trumpeted in a TV ad is "Two Thumbs Up", but if you read Ebert's reviews, you see that many times, the thumb is either barely up, or in the case of Hellboy, barely down. Ebert said that he "liked 49% of Hellboy, but disliked 51% of it. But this list, and his persistent championing of such fare as Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre, makes me rethink my position on old Roger.

Day off tomorrow, whoo-hoo. Sleep will be good.

Why I can't vote for GWB, and a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing...

I work in a video store, and I'm the supervisor of the adult room. I take my job very seriously, and I'll admit, I enjoy porn. But if this turns out to be true, then I can't even consider voting for George this fall. From the article:

In this field office in Washington, 32 prosecutors, investigators and a handful of FBI agents are spending millions of dollars to bring anti-obscenity cases to courthouses across the country for the first time in 10 years. Nothing is off limits, they warn, even soft-core cable programs such as HBO's long-running Real Sex or the adult movies widely offered in guestrooms of major hotel chains.

Department officials say they will send "ripples" through an industry that has proliferated on the Internet and grown into an estimated $10 billion-a-year colossus profiting Fortune 500 corporations such as Comcast, which offers hard-core movies on a pay-per-view channel.

I'm kind of lukewarm on Kerry(mainly because he flip-flops like a koi on dry land) but to me, the Bush administration is trying to chip away at many of the modern freedoms that we've come to be accustomed to in order to set up some kind of new, half-assed Puritan society. As my friend Elle Wiz suggested today, between this, broadband in every household by 2007, and going after steroids and Howard Stern, George would like us to forget that there's still a war going on.

This is also some interesting, albeit very NSFW reading about the subject, and about one Rob Black, pornographer, entrepreneur, and former wrestling promoter(XPW, a sub-ECW, hell, even sub-JCW-level promotion). Black and his girlfriend, Lizzie Borden, are going to be the newest obscenity test case.

On a lighter note, I watched the third Matrix movie tonight at work. Bleagh. If they had taken this and Reloaded and edited the two of them together, it probably would have been a good movie. Ultimately, it takes too damn long to get going, and when it does, it's unsatisfying. The problem is that the first half of the movie is a lot of talk, and a lot of meandering psuedo-religous psychobabble at that. Then Neo, Morpheous and Trinity take a back seat to characters you've barely even seen for a good half an hour before it ultimately ends in one big stupid non-ending. I can say nothing great about this movie. It may actually be a worse trilogy ending then Return of The Jedi, though we'll see next year about that. It's too bad, too. The Wachowskis made an amazing science fiction film, then screwed it up by trying to get too deep and philosophical.

Huskies again, and Michel Gondry.

Surprisingly, there's no orange glow in the north yet, given that the Husky women beat Tennessee tonight. I imagine the drunken morons in Storrs are turning over cars and smiling for TV cameras, just like the idiots at Northeastern who rioted in February when the Pats won the Super Bowl. Can't wait to hear the stories of poor college kids ID'ed in photos being hauled into Vernon Superior Court. I didn't see the game, unfortunately, nor did I see Mussina pitching like Jeff Weaver either.

Sterling has another stupid catch phrase now for Yankee games. Last year it was the "Giambino", this year we're gonna be sick to death of hearing about "A-Bombs". Someone needs to smack him upside the head.

Watched the Michel Gondry Directors Series DVD at work tonight. Good stuff. Lots of experimental stuff with bullet time, editing tricks, and Legos. I actually liked it more then the Spike Jonze DVD, despite the fact that Spike's DVD has Walken dancing. Highlights of the disc are:

"The Hardest Button To Button" by the White Stripes, a marvel of live action stop motion editing and photography, as Jack and Meg make their way around Manhattan one frame at a time.

6 Bjork Videos, including "Human Behavior" and "Army Of Me".

and "Lucas With The Lid Off", an amazing video for a one-hit wonder jazz-hop white rapper from the mid-90's, all shot in one long, Citizen Kaneesque take.

Definitely worth your 18 bucks.

Raw thoughts and Husky hoops

Raw was pretty decent. Nice old school ECW promo by Foley for the Orton/Foley match, and Shelton Benjamin takes another win from HHH(though a cheap countout), and then gets a big old beatdown for his troubles setting up Evolution vs. Foley, Benoit, HBK, and Benjamin next Monday on Raw. I'd say that that match will be the end of Benjamin's initial ride in the Main Event, though the dirt sites are suggesting that he might get shoehorned into the main event at Backlash. The show ended with an Evolution beatdown of the faces, suggesting a face win next week, but who knows...

Lesser things: Lita is getting a title shot at Backlash, unfortunately, as Trish has been added to the Jericho/Christian match. I guess it's okay, but I'd rather see Trish v. Vickie, since Lita still hasn't shown any of the skill she used to have.

Poor Rhyno and Tajiri. Both of them have been fed to Kane in successive weeks, but at least Rhyno's not about to be stuck in a stupid storyline with the Coach.

I pity Nick Dinsmore. Here's a guy who's been kicking around the minors for a while, and when he finally gets brought up, he's saddled with a "retard who's related to Bischoff" gimmick. Feh. I pity Steve "William" Regal more, because he returns from major heart problems, and gets stuck managing "Eugene" Dinsmore. Apparently the character is inspired by a character in "There's Something About Mary", and he started his illustrious career by licking Jerry Lawler. Hopefully, he'll go get tested for STD's tonight.

Huskies are up 14 with about 3 and a half to go, though they were up 25. Still, I don't expect a catastrophe here.

Day off, Huskies, opening day proper, and the soundtrack meme...

First day off in 9, since Dad and I were doing instores this weekend. Laura is watching Blue's Room, and then I'm gonna watch some baseball. Happy for opening day, because it means despite the temperatures out, spring is officially here. Watched a little of the Sox/Orioles last night, and the last ten minutes of the UConn women's game. UConn/Tennessee again, but I doubt Tennessee will be an issue.

Saw this on N8's blog, and I'd rather do this one then the long-ass one that's on Ken's blog, because that one's about a page or so. This one's shorter and easier. It's called "Soundtrack Your Life", and I agree with N8 that there should be a 'Grueling Kung Fu Training Scene" choice.

Opening credits: Coldplay, "Clocks"
Waking up: White Town, "Theme for an Early Evening American Sitcom"
Average day: Mr. Bungle, "Theme from Super Mario Brothers"
First date: A Flock Of Seagulls, "I Ran" (what did they play at YOUR roller rink in 1984? I thought so.)
Falling in love: Todd Rundgren, "Couldn't I Just Tell You"
Love scene: Barry White, "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Baby"
Fight scene: Toyomasu Hotei, "Graveyard of Honor And Humanity"
Breaking up: Ben Folds Five "Song For The Dumped"
Getting back together: Neil Young, "Change Your Mind"
Secret love: Clay Aiken, "Invisible"
Life's okay: Dave Matthews Band, "Everyday"
Mental breakdown: Suicidal Tendencies, "Institutuonalized"
Driving: Deep Purple, "Highway Star(Live)"
Learning a lesson: Opeth, "Windowpane"
Deep thought: Dave Brubeck "Take Five"
Flashback: Van Halen, "Jump"
Partying: Andrew W.K., "Party Hard"
Happy dance: Iggy Pop, "Lust for Life"
Regreting: The Replacements, "Nobody"
Long night alone: Warren Zevon, "Accidentally Like A Martyr"
Death scene: Frank Zappa, "Watermelon In Easter Hay"
Closing credits: Hatebreed, "Before Dishonor"

Damn this daylight savings crap...

In Home Depot way too early this morning handing out samples. Body says no, it's only 7:30 am, you should be sleeping. Didn't do too much to blog about this weekend. Sampled in Depot yesterday, then out to dinner with the 'rents and my sister and her husband, then home to catch the end of the UConn-Duke game. Don't think UConn's gonna beat GT tomorrow, but it would be nice. Bought the new Blue Underground SE of The Final Countdown, and the MGM 2 in 1 of Troll/Troll 2. The former is a favorite from the cable days, and the latter I bought because Troll 2 is possibly one of the best bad, bad, bad movies of all time.

Laurene and Laura are both asleep, so I'm catching up with two nights worth of boxing while they're out. Something of more interest tomorrow, when my brain is working again. Maybe I'll do the "soundtrack your life" meme that's currently rolling around the blogs.

10 movies that should have been on the list, and a creepy musical guilty pleasure...

Okay, I've had a couple of days to think about this while buzzing the list, and I have my ten films that should have made the list.

In no particular order:

1. Miracle Mile - originally concieved as a segment of the ill-fated Twilight Zone film but kicked out as too dark, this film asks the question "What if you picked up a pay phone that was ringing and the guy on the other end says the world is coming to an end?" Anthony Edwards goes through the LA night to find Mare Winningham, who he's just met and fallen in love with. Well shot, ultimately dark but worth it because you care about the characters. Plus it has a great Tangerine Dream score.
2. Velvet Goldmine - A great film about David Bowie, but not really, Todd Haynes' film about glam rock is flashy and fun and anchored by a great performance by Ewan McGregor as the film's ersatz Iggy Pop. Ultimately a bit gay for most people, but if you like glam rock, and don't mind it being performed by Thom Yorke and Thurston Moore, this is the movie for you.
3. A Shock To The System - Michael Caine stars as a milquetoast middle management guy who finds out that he can kill his way to the top. A clever whodunnit that features a crackling Caine performance and a great turn by Peter Riegert.
4. The Crimson Rivers - Phenomenal French mystery starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel. It'll keep you guessing right up to the end.
5. Princess Mononoke - Japan's top grossing film until Titanic came along, fumbled badly by Miramax, which saddled it with a terrible dub and then virtually ignored it. Miyazaki is the only director who can still make a 2-D animated film that people will see.
6. 24 Hour Party People - The story of how one man invented rave culture, quite by accident. Flouts all the conventions of normal films, but does so in such a way that you're so engrossed in this mildly shaggy-dog story that you don't care. Fabulous soundtrack, also.
7. Kafka - Steven Soderburgh took all the goodwill he got from Sex, Lies and Videotape and wasted it on this kooky, half BW/half color experiment featuring Jeremy Irons playing Kafka as patent clerk who lives his fiction. Great fun, not on DVD but it should be.
8. Dead and Buried - finally on DVD after being out of print for years, this creepy, creepy horror movie from the guys who wrote Alien is a great early 80's classic. Features Robert Englund before he was Freddy and Jack Albertson in his last film role.
9. The Salton Sea - odd neo-noir about crystal meth addicts and cops and Vincent D'Onofrio re-enacting the Kennedy asassination with mice. Phenomenal performances abound. Stylish and very twist-filled.
10. Real Genius - More Val Kilmer. He could have been a phenomenal comedic actor, and this is witty, witty stuff. A cable staple in the late 80's, and one of my favorite movies of all time.

On to music. I'm pretty much all over the place taste-wise, from Zappa to Blind Guardian, Miles Davis to Opeth, and mostly everything in between(except neo-country. Bleah.) I spend a lot of time in Home Depots for my job, and I spend a lot of time listening to Depot muzak. Recently, one of my favorites has been a song called "Invisible", by American Idol 2 runner-up Clay Aiken. I liked the chorus and the slightly rock tinge to the song. Then I listened to the lyrics a little closer.

This is a song about stalking:

What are you doing tonight
I wish I could be a fly on your wall
Are you really alone
Still in your dreams
Why can't I bring you into my life
What would it take to make you see that I'm alive

[Chorus]

If I was invisible
Then I could just watch you in your room
If I was invisible
I'd make you mine tonight
If hearts were unbreakable
Then I can just tell you where I stand
I would be the smartest man
If I was invisible
(Wait..I already am)

I saw your face in the crowd
I called out your name
You don't hear a sound
I keep tracing your steps
Each move that you make
Wish I could be what goes through your mind
Wish you could touch me with the colors of your life

(chorus)

I reach out
But you don't even see me
Even when I'm screaming
Baby, you don't hear me
I am nothing without you
Just a shadow passing through...

(repeat chorus to fade)

Creepy, huh? And 12-year olds love this song, and this guy. Video's pretty priceless. He's singing the song on an L.A. streetcorner somewhere, and all the girls are freaking out. He sings to a fat girl who's crying. They're working his image pretty hard. But he's as whitebread as they come. He may, in fact, be more whitebread then my boy Bacon, the Modern Puritan, and that's saying something.