Friday, April 29, 2011

Volcanic Sunlight...

...is the innermost part of something special.

Saul Williams' new album Volcanic Sunlight comes out on May 2nd (and I'm assuming May 3rd in the States), just a few days from now. I guess I'm a little late with this, but on April 21st, he posted four videos on youtube about the album.







Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Gerard Smith

A member of one of my favorite bands, TV On The Radio died this morning. Gerard Smith was a pretty young guy (34 years old), and I wasn't even aware he was fighting lung cancer, so his death came as quite a shock to me. While he is mostly known for being the bass player with stage fright (I can relate to that), he also has been credited for many other instruments, including guitar, electric sitar, piano, organ, synthesizers, Rhodes, samples, and vocals.

I'm not sure if Gerard Smith is credited on the song "Will Do", since 4 of the 5 members of the band are credited for playing bass on their new album Nine Types Of Light (which was just released about a week ago), but I wanted to post it anyway.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Judgment Day

According to The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Skynet goes online in less than a few hours. On Thursday it will become self-aware and attempt to destroy humanity. Just wanted to warn you guys.

haiku

Jar of vampires
Sucking blood with the lights on
Fireflies with fangs

Monday, April 4, 2011

Werewolf Balls, Spaceman Balls.

Here's a little update since I haven't posted anything in a while.

I went to a St. Patrick's Day party at my cousin Megan's house. We ate food, talked, played board games, played Rock Band (including the wonderful LEGO version). Here's a photo of some of us playing Rock Band. I'm the tall guy standing up.



A week later, I went to the mall with Patrick and Caleb. It was Caleb's first malltrip with us, and I was worried that our malling style was boring him, because we generally just wander around aimlessly, but I think we all had a good time.

We went to a toy store in the mall, and played in there for quite a while. This toy store always has cheap, statuesque "action" figures that don't come in any packaging, so it was quite easy to play with them, or mostly just posing them. I put a man with a gun riding a white tiger, shooting at a triceratops. There was a werewolf figure that I noticed was so detailed that it was actually anatomically correct. While it was wearing torn blue shorts, they were very tight, and you could easily see the bulges where his penis and testicles were. Whoever designed that figure must have been such a perfectionist. I made the anatomically correct werewolf ride a horse.

When we went to the food court to eat dinner, there was a new Chinese restaurant right next door to the Chinese restaurant we usually get food at when we're at the mall. We were walking past the new restaurant to get to our usual place when we were intercepted by a young man giving out samples of chicken. Then we noticed our usual place also had a person out in front aggressively handing out chicken samples. The other restaurants in the food court must have felt that these two competing Chinese restaurants giving out samples were making them look bad, or maybe it just got them into the competitive spirit too, because several other restaurants were giving out free samples of their food too. If we had just walked one lap around the food court collecting free samples, we probably would have gotten the equivalent of an entire meal, and I'm not exaggerating at all.

The Borders Books at the mall went out of business. I had no idea until we got there and the store was almost completely empty. There would be an almost completely empty shelf except for one lonely book I'd never heard of sitting there. We didn't even go in because it looked so depressing. Borders was probably my favorite store at the mall. Besides the fact that it just had so many things I'm interested in, it also stayed open an hour later than every other store in the mall, so even after most of the mall was closing, you could go hang out at Borders for a while before going home. Now when all the other stores close, there's no where to go except home. We walked by Borders again later, and it was completely empty. No books on any shelf, and there was a sign on the door that said "Closed". I assume it meant for good, so we practically watched it die. I looked in the window of that empty store with empty shelves, and a sign on the bookshelf ten feet in front of me said "True Crime". Well said, sign. Well said.

We also saw the movie Paul. I'm kind of shocked I haven't heard anyone talk about this movie, even though it's been over a week now since I saw it. It's seriously the best new comedy I've seen in ages. I didn't know much about it going in, aside from who played the three main characters, and I was expecting to at least enjoy myself, but I couldn't have guessed I'd be nearly as entertained as I was. There were so many wonderful actors showing up throughout the movie, including Sigourney Weaver (whose voice I recognized immediately), and there was a "phoned-in" cameo by one of my favorite filmmakers. There were so many references to science fiction movies that I love, but they were always really clever references. There was a lot of swearing, but it all had to do with the story, and was really funny swearing that I can guarantee you've never heard anything like before. The movie was also surprisingly pretty deep and intelligent. Anyone who is a fan of comedies, or a fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (from Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, and Hot Fuzz), and anyone who is into Science Fiction needs to go see the movie.

Also, I guess I should mention I finally took a driving test today and passed. I now have a license to drive.