Best Books (with words in them) I Read in 2013

I read some real winners this year.  Narrowing it down to 5 best was like being at Total Wine and More (which we have nothing like in Memphis) and knowing what I didn't drink on the spot would have to fit in my carry-on.  But after much deliberation, here are the ones I'm most glad to have read:


Beloved - Toni Morrison  (anyone know if she's related to Jim?)

Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist (full disclosure: I read this in spite of it being recommended by Jay Bastardo.)

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami

Goodbye Columbus - Phillip Roth

Honorable mentions to Closely Watched Trains (by Hrabal, who someone turned me onto years ago), The Third Policeman (O'Brian) and Ender's Game (Card), all of which I enjoyed immensely. 

Now show me yours. 

More Year-End Lists: What Did We Get Stuck In Our Rectums This Year?

Praise the searchable database: The Consumer Product Safety Commission is the resource for the compilation below. Here is what your fellow Americans are inserting this year:

PENIS

penis plug

20-30 magnetic bucky balls

dice

fishtank airhose

antenna

sewing needle

dental floss with beads

marble

embedded domino in penis "to please the ladies"

VAGINA

glue stick

small finger vibrator - "it's still on"

"long black object"

penis ring

rivet

spoon

pencil eraser

napkins in vagina to have sex during period

RECTUM

soda can

soda bottle

flashlight

bathtub stopper

shot glass (broken)

sock

end of curtain rod

"big purple dildo"

toy submarine

"patient states he was experiencing an itchy rectum and inserted a remote control to scratch"

"patient states he got drunk and passed out at girlfriends house, awoke with spoons and dildos in rectum"

pool ball

lit bottle rocket; "it didn't go well"

My 2013 Best Of

• Black Sabbath - 13
• The Bronx - IV
• David Bowie - The Next Day
• Gary Numan - Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind)
• Iggy & The Stooges - Ready To Die
• My Bloody Valentine - m b v
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
• Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks
• Superchunk - I Hate Music
• Yo La Tengo - Fade

As always, my definition of best means albums I was motivated to purchase and listen to repeatedly.  My honorable mention for 2013 includes ...

• Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
• Queens Of The Stone Age - ... Like Clockwork
• The Thermals - Desperate Ground
• They Might Be Giants - Nanobots
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra - II

Like I Was Saying ...

Here's my simple plan:

1. Drink black coffee at home.  (I already do at work.)
2. Eat a healthier breakfast.  No more PopTarts and muffins.  Half a cup of oatmeal, handful of raisins (or chopped up banana), handful of almonds, cinnamon.
3. Eat a healthier lunch. I take my lunch to work four days a week, so that should be easy.  Turkey sandwich on wheat bread (no cheese), pretzels, fruit.
4. No more snacking after dinner.
5. No drinking during the week.  A beer or two every night is killing me.
6. I'll pay more attention to portion sizes.
7. I'll work out at least three times a week, but hopefully four.

Somehow, I've managed to regain most of my weight. I got on the scales a week ago, and to my horror (notice I didn't say surprise), I'm back up to 193 pounds. Unacceptable. Of the things on my original list, I'm still doing one.

Bastards, I'm rededicating myself to the lifestyle pledge I made three years ago. Anybody else?

Of Course ... But Maybe

Behold the brilliance of Louis C.K.

Anyone Else Working This Xmas?

Yeah I thought so.

Happy Festivus, Citizens!

Also Shit

O'Toole sliced off the top of his finger in a boating accident during the production of "The Lion in Winter." His remedy? The actor dipped the finger in brandy before pushing it back into place and getting it bandaged. Three weeks later he unwrapped the bandage and found he'd put the top of the finger on upside down. "Probably because of the brandy, which I drank," he quipped.

I saw the 70mm re-release of Lawrence of Arabia at a great theater - the Paris, in Manhattan. Stunning. If you ever get a chance, go. Also a great film to get your Guinness on, since - as we all know - we're not allowed to appreciate Alec Guinness in Star Wars.

Alec Guinness Reads From His Diaries:

Shit

Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) dead at 82.  Anybody remember those movies?  "Billy Jack’s Crusade To End The War In Iraq And Restore America To Its Moral Purpose" was probably my favorite.

Battle Of The PBS Stars

God, I used to love SCTV.

The Colourful Mr. Eggleston

Watch it before the BBC pulls it.

My new jam

I am really obsessed with this song. What a voice! She's called Mapei and she has an EP of generic and fairly crappy rap, but this is a preview single from an upcoming album where she's decided to sing. Yummy.

Last One There Pays for the Rest of Us!

See you there.

Yawn

Anybody listening to anything good these days?

'Tis The Season!

Massachusetts Mall Santa Charged with Groping Elf
BOSTON Tue Nov 26, 2013 (Reuters) - A man who worked as a Santa Claus in a Massachusetts shopping mall has been ordered not to put the red suit back on until a court resolves a charge that he groped an adult coworker over the weekend.

We Must Be In That Self-Destructive / Acting Out Phase of the Crumbling Empire...

Seriously: provoking China?

I've Got Your Black Friday Right HERE!

Proud of myself for getting Dave's gift at Walgreens before someone at corporate put up the "item no longer available".

...And Happy Thanksgivukkah!

As the token Gentile* in this group, let me be the first to wish you all Happy Thankgivukkah! We may not be around for the next one (in 79,000 years), except for Joe - who is timeless. Or unless Jay re-formats the Hebrew lunisolar calendar.



*I know, I know. But a little research on ancestry.com and the Ellis Island immigration database helped turn up the following surnames:

Beckerstein
Rowlandberg
Eisencurtis
McGlück
Rosen-Rosenheinz

It was pretty compelling.

Drunky Happsgiving!

May yer beers be merry and yer drinks be numbing. Anyone traveling in the nightmare that is the east coast weather system?

Go Here Now

Waste your whole day with this thing. I dare you.

Friday Jay Reatard Fix*

*Memphis bastards may notice this is not, in fact, Jay Reatard.

Shorter Post For The Time-Conscious Bastard

Well, This Is Cool

From Dangerous Minds:

MAD magazine was at the absolute height of its circulation in the mid 1970s—north of two million of each issue hit the newsstands then—so it was no surprise that television executives wanted in on the action. ABC ordered a pilot for an animated MAD series, but shelved it due to the “adult” humor and apparently because they didn’t want to piss off their bread and butter. Dick DeBartolo (“MAD’s maddest writer!”) said of the ill-fated pilot (eventually aired as a one-off “special” apparently) “Nobody wanted to sponsor a show that made fun of products that were advertised on TV, like car manufacturers.”

The Greatest Television Asset Of All Time

In one of television’s biggest syndication deals, “The Simpsons,” the longest-running scripted show in TV history, will finally be moving to cable television... Fox sold the reruns to its FXX network... and ... has acquired both cable and streaming rights to the more than 550 episodes. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a representative of one of the other companies that pursued the package said that the bidding was highly competitive and estimated that the per-episode figure reached $1.5 million to $1.6 million. That would put the value of the deal at close to $900 million.

World Toilet Day!

World Toilet Day

Definitely a bastard tradition.
You know what to do.

Photo Blog

I came across a pretty cool photo blog today.  It lacks some of the classier features of the pictorial sites I typically peruse (no naked female warriors wielding medieval weaponry, for example) and the photographer himself is probably a douchebag, but it beats a sharp stick in the eye. 

As someone who was making $400 million to make one movie once said, "I don't know if it's art, but I like it."  

Famous Paintings, But Funny

From The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fighting, an Australian sketch comedy show.

Bastards Assemble! Or at least two of us!

The cool bastards assembled in Durham this weekend. Above you'll see, from left to right, me, Joe and Eric. It was a swell time except when Eric discussed his nipples and when the Saints lost. Also, I greeted Eric for the first time in maybe 30 years whilst dressed as a golfing zombie. Otherwise, business as usual. Below, our requisite Fuck Jay pic.

Raleigh Rally

Citizens of the blog: I invited myself to stay with founding Basterd Dave AND run a half-marathon in 35 degree weather this weekend!

Please tell me these are wise moves.

Brilliant!

Talent Scout

I have a music club at school. Although most of the kids are well-meaning but warbly, occasionally I run across some really great talent. Vanessa is a sixteen year old junior who has performed in musical theater and has excellent taste in music. I got my NOLA band mate and producer buddy Dave to come over from Asheville this weekend to record her and a couple of other students. Here's a recording of her singing a One Republic song over at my Soundcloud page. Holy crikey she's good. Stay tuned for the third chorus where she lays on a big note and then a beautiful falsetto note. She figured out how to do harmonies and just generally made me feel like a total dick of a singer. I included my amp in the picture just so I could feel like I had something to do with this tornado of awesomeness.

More Shit

Marcia Wallace, a.k.a. The Simpsons’ Mrs. Krabappel. Fuck cancer.

Shit

Someone Get That Kid A Treat

I Know What Jay's Getting For Christmas

"Only classical composers were known by just their surnames, and this suited my mudlark temperament quite nicely."

Gravy. Err....Gravity.

I saw it last weekend and I liked it. Sure there are scientific holes in the plot (as if I'd notice), but it was truly suspenseful and, in a rare display of Hollywood moderation, clocks in at only 90 minutes. Definitely see it in 3D, if not in Imax. Good popcorn fare.

Yup

75 Years

Pretty cool.

What This Blog Needs Is More Russian Tampon Commercials

And I Like The Show

No spoilers! I'll be watching last night's episode this evening.

This Looks Kind of Good

On Location

So I'm just minding my bastard business one day recently when the above note appears on my door. I speak to a representative from Night Train Productions, and they're interested in using my old relatively undisturbed barn for a NASCAR ESPN Race for the Chase promo featuring country music artist Gretchen Wilson.

As Ms. Wilson has never appeared on Rock 'n' Roll Snob, I of course had never heard of her. But I'm informed that she's a grammy-winning singer whose most famous song is Redneck Woman.
10 million views.

So they filmed this past week. I expect all y'all to watch NASCAR and to whoop out when ya see ma barn.

Can't. Make. This. Shit. Up.

Sousa-FAIL!

I'm easily amused.

Looking To Get Away? Frustrated By The Government Shutdown?

Why not move to Middle Earth? Elves & shit!

So I Saw This...

And it was great.  There's a boot of it up on the ftp site.  The band came out in matching western shirts and orange (really orange) cowboy hats, with Paul and Tommy wearing pink skirts.  They then proceeded to rip it to shreds for 25 or so songs, including Shiftless When Idle, Can't Hardly Wait, I Will Dare, Borstal Breakout and others.  Paul came out on drums for a shambolic encore (Tommy on guitar, drummer Freese on bass) that made stabs at Hootenanny, Detroit Rock City and Substitute (Paul did his best Daltrey until the mike broke, which he promptly tossed out to the audience). It was all brilliant.  I should also mention that I enjoyed Iggy and the Stooges, Superchunk, GBV, Rocket From the Crypt, some other bands I can't remember, and legalized marijuana.  That will probably be my last travel to a show for awhile.  At least until the next one.

Bad Karmadillo

PORT CHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A theater manager says a stuffed armadillo that was stolen from Willie Nelson's band after a show in suburban New York has been returned unharmed. He says the band isn't pressing charges.

Who steals from Willie Nelson? And what's in that armadillo?

[Video of the armadillo bandit]

The Best Thing I've Seen All Week

I Said Goddamn

Glorious power pop from Red Kross. Thank you, Jebus.

Many Happy Returns, LC

During a triumphant three-hour show on the latest leg of his world tour, Cohen said:

"I hope I stay on the road a little bit longer - but you may not be so enthusiastic when you hear my reason.
You see I want to start smoking next year when I'll be 80. It's been a long barren time. I think it's the right age to recommence. I'd like to do it on stage and I'd like to be standing here like this, in front of sympathetic people like yourselves.
A nurse would come onto the stage with a silver tray. On that tray would be an open pack of cigarettes - the little cylinders gleaming like the pillars of a great temple.
She would approach me in her white pleated uniform, her little stockings and tiny white shoes. I'd take one of those cigarettes and tap it on that silver tray and she would light me up.
I'd say 'nurse before you go, would you mind tapping out a few of those bubbles in my IV'. Then I'd take my first drag and I'd feel extremely relaxed and I'd be able to review some of the disasters of my shabby past, especially my relationship with a certain woman I regret having disappointed."

A Bastardly 79th to the Canadian, may we all smoke at 80.

YARRRH!

You know what to do, seamen!

Joe, You Win

I'm pre-jealous of your Replacements/GBV sojourn. It looks like it's kind of for dirty hippies, though - with the on-site camping and all - so that makes me feel a little better. Weren't you supposed to get us all tickets?

Wise Up Ghost

Ok fellas, it's here. And it's good. It's really, really good. Now I know that all of you guys are white as hell, and you're definition of funk usually involves the terms 'vanilla' and 'ice', but I think you will dig what's happening here. For This Project, there's the album, Wise Up Ghost, and a live show from last fucking night in Brooklyn, which I've dubbed Brooklyn Bowl since they played at a bowling alley. At the live show, there are also Rootsified versions of Costello classics like 'Spooky Girlfriend', 'I Want You', 'Chelsea', and 'Watching the Detectives'. All fantastic. Favorite tracks so far: 'Tripwire', 'Cinco Minutos Con Vos', 'Sugar Won't Work', and the title track. Get ya some!

Who Knew?

 So apparently, Jim Henson was covertly introducing us to porn at a very young age. My sources are telling me that the "Mahna Mahna" song was from a Swedish porno from the 60's





I"m just as dumbfounded as beaker. And if in fact this is a Swedish porn flick, that answers a lot of questions about why the Swedish Chef was on the show.

Here's the clip from the film...

Har Har

Because we all miss Rock and Roll Confidential

“No, it’s cool Bethany, you just keep dancing and I’ll just keep looking for your fucking car keys.”

This had me laughing really hard. It does for indie bands what the Hall of Douchebags did for 90s and metal bands on RRC. 

Phallus Phriday

Phallocopters!

I'm Guessing This Is Comcast

Come on, we've all been there.

Yesterday's Apple Announcement Reminded Me Of This

Funny because it's true. Will I buy a 5s? Absolutely.

Sometimes The Conspiracy Theorists Are Right

Nap Attack!

Any of you young trendsetters got one of these yet?

The Force Is Strong With This One...

As I recall, we have some bastards with connections to the Northwest. Perhaps they can explain how the sith lord could find the time to learn to play the flaming bagpipes and unicycle all while laying down the moves on Natalie Portman. And since when did he move to Portland...


  

It'll Melt Your Car

Okay

Gratuitous picture of Barbara Bach so I don't have to look at that frame from the labor video.

Labor Day

How are you celebrating labor today?  Cooking out, cold bevs?  Football game tonight, Joe?  Hope no one is actually laboring. 

Labor Day Already? Give Me An Air Conditioner, A Couch, A Movie..

Stay indoors. It's too hot for bastards outside.

Lurker, Didn't You Already Do This Experiment?

Take credit for your research!

Brainfinger!

Mind control is finally here. I'll have minions!

[no sound on this video]

God Bless the USA

Nothing says Amurica like a bald eagle flying in a church full of God-fearin' people chanting U-S-A U-S-A! Then it went wrong. I feel bad for bird though. Apparently he's ok. Is it just me or would this not be out of place in a Simpsons episode?

Ermagahd

They sound fucking awesome! Praise the Lawd!

Action Figures, Goddammit

The Secret Story of TOYS from Anthony Ladesich on Vimeo.

Massive Alan Lomax Field Recordings Archive Now Online

NPR says ...

Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. It's part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.

Lomax recorded a staggering amount of folk music. He worked from the 1930s to the '90s, and traveled from the Deep South to the mountains of West Virginia, all the way to Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. When it came time to bring all of those hours of sound into the digital era, the people in charge of the Lomax archive weren't quite sure how to tackle the problem.

"We err on the side of doing the maximum amount possible," says Don Fleming, executive director of the Association for Cultural Equity, the nonprofit organization Lomax founded in New York in the '80s. Fleming and a small staff made up mostly of volunteers have digitized and posted some 17,000 sound recordings.

"For the first time, everything that we've digitized of Alan's field recording trips are online, on our website," says Fleming. "It's every take, all the way through. False takes, interviews, music."

The archive can be found here. I dipped my toe in and found this ...

"Come Out the Wildnerness," performed by Boyd Rivers and his wife Ruth May. Preceded by introduction of themselves and their music. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long, August 30, 1978, at the Rivers' home in Canton, Mississippi.

In The Not Too Distant Future

This was a graduation project for Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.

Passage à l'acte By Martin Arnold

Wikipedia says:

Martin Arnold (born 1959 in Vienna, Austria) is an experimental filmmaker known for his obsessive reworkings of found footage. He is also a founding member of the Austrian film distributor Sixpack Film. Arnold studied psychology and art history at the University of Vienna. He has taught filmmaking at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt, the Kansas City Art Institute, Bard College, and at SUNY Binghamton. His films are distributed by Canyon Cinema in the United States and by Sixpack Film in Austria.

Arnold's films are intensely cut sequences in which several seconds of found footage are taken and stretched out into much longer works. The figures on the screen flip back and forth between frames, as the motion is repeated, reversed, and numerous single frame cuts are made. His intent is to create, or possibly unearth, narratives concealed within the mundane films from which he samples. Passage à l'acte (1993) uses several seconds of the film To Kill a Mockingbird to create a bizarre story of aggression and tension within a traditional American family.

Martin Arnold is representative of the generations of artists making the transition between experimental film and video art. Pieces such as Passage à l'acte (1993) were composed on film, with Arnold writing an edit decision list (EDL) for a film editor, who then recreated the choppy and intense works from the found source material. In the mid-1990s, Arnold was given access to an Avid digital editing machine, which allowed him to work directly with the footage and cut it into the intensely repetitive sequences himself. His first digitally cut project, Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998), made use of footage of Mickey Rooney's character Andy Hardy from the popular film series.

Shit

Well That Explains THAT

I always wondered.

Friday!

I'm on the road for the third Friday in a row.

Records

Anybody listening to anything good?

Joe: Why Do You Live In That State Again?

Seriously. We may have to perform an extraction.

Let's review, 'cause, it's time to cook...

If you haven't been watching Breaking Bad, you're missing out. Former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan has put together one hell of a show. The final 8 episodes begin tonight on AMC. In case you've been watching Phish concerts online, watching cat videos on you tube, or hangin out at Rock ' Roll Snob in stead of watching Breaking Bad, here's a little synopsis to get you caught up...

AMC is running the first 8 episodes of season 5 prior to the new episode today. Yeah Bitch!

Cats Are So Weird

We're All Going To This, Right?

Kinda slipped by me, somehow-- but I'm more jacked about this than about Super Star Trek Man Vs Pacific Iron Wolverine Man or whatever else I've missed this summer. I'll watch Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in just about anything, (anyone else love The Informant!?), and this film has District 9 bloodlines...

Sharktroversy...

Shark Week on the Discovery channel pretty much blows. Turns out they faked a whole show. Sensationalized bullshit. This from the network that has a show about fishing with vaginas. Did you hear what I said? Fishing. With. Vagina. Setting my DVR. On a more positive note, Nat Geo Wild is doing shark week right.

I Don't Get It

As a live band, Phish just doesn't live up to the hype.

Enhancing Your Performance

A Bastardo on a questionable substance? Whoever heard of such a thing?!

I'm Back.

As you were.

Joe's On The Road, So ...

I'll take his Vintage Pinup Friday. Submitted for your approval, Lillian Parker (AKA Adrienne Stoute). Miss Parker was an innovator. If you Google her - and you should - you'll quickly notice that she was trimming the infield 40 years before that was an acceptable practice.

Bonus!