Fuck This Year. Fuck This Decade.

Happy New Year, Bastards!

Why The World Hates The US

This captures it pretty well.

Week Three Weigh In

190.4, a one week loss of 1.6 pounds.

Total weight lost so far, 5 pounds.

My first weigh in was a baseline and not really the first week, so I've adjusted weeks accordingly. I don't feel like I've really sacrificed by reducing my intake of the bad stuff. If anything, it makes me appreciate it more when I do partake.

Someone Still Loves You Steven Tyler

This is SSLYBY's official video for "Back In The Saddle."

Fascinating

Here's a 1986 BBC documentary examining the discovery of LSD and its similarity to mescaline. For some inexplicable reason, it plays twice. It's really only 39 minutes long, but if you can only watch part of it, skip to around the 20 minute mark. In 1955, under the guidance of his friend Dr. Humphrey Osmond, British politician Christopher Mayhew ingested 400 mg of mescaline hydrochloride. The entire experience was filmed for a television series called Panorama but never aired. Mayhew's description of how he experienced the passage of time is pretty fucking cool.

Auditorium

American Princes - Auditorium  The song I can't get out of my head.  Nappy You Hear everyone. 

How Do I Look?

Happy New Year!

Telly Savalas Looks At Aberdeen

Don't ask me why, but I love shit like this.

Telly also looked at Portsmouth and Birmingham. (The Birmingham film is blocked by the BBC in this country.)

It's Great!

Caught True Grit over the weekend. It has Oscar written all over it.

Spirit of the Season

Merry Christmas, Bastards

NSFA. Honestly, don't watch this.

Week Two Weigh In

192.0, a one week loss of 2.2 pounds.

Total weight lost so far, 3.4 pounds.

Merry Christmas.

Tron

I thought it was pretty good. Some questionable acting, but the visuals and action sequences were amazing. My kids liked it too, so there you go.

A Holiday Message From Ricky Gervais

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith.” I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe,” comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

Read the rest of The Wall Street Journal article here.

Happy Christmas, Bastards

The sometimes annual Xmas mix is up. Faster Than Prancer, easily.

Happy Winter Solstice

Celebrate the shortest day of the year with the above performance by a short rock god (keep eyes peeled about 3:30 in). Bonus for hipsters who can name the members of this curiously excellent all-star lineup.

(Northern Hemisphere Bastards Only)

Shit

Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)

Week One Weigh In

194.2, a one week loss of 1.2 pounds.  I'll take it.

I'm not expecting you guys to weigh in this week, I just needed to see results.  And document them.

Talented People Still Suck

Modern Times “is a low/no budget film created entirely against a green screen with friends as actors."


MODERN TIMES from BC2010 on Vimeo.


Behind the Scenes from BC2010 on Vimeo.

I would just like to point out that that's a Boards of Canada song playing during the second video clip.  Haters can suck it.

Shit

High Bastardic Convergence?

What better occasion than 11/11/11 -- NIGEL TUFNEL DAY?
Just throwing it out there. I think it's a Friday.

Well?

2010 was, in my humilde opinión, much better for new music than last year.  I couldn't get excited about much of anything released in 2009; in fact, it was so bad that I didn't bother to post a year end list on that other blog ...

So here's what I've got on my scorecard for this year, in alphabetical order.  (But honestly, if I had to pick just one, it would be Spoon's Transference.)

• Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
• Belle And Sebastian - Write About Love
• Devo - Something For Everybody
• The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever
• LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
• The New Pornographers - Together
• Someone Still Love You Boris Yeltsin - Let It Sway
• Spoon - Transference
• Superchunk - Majesty Shredding
• Ted Leo And The Pharmacists - Brutalist Bricks

Help Me, Obi Wan!

I don't remember being that attracted to R2...

Judge A Book By It's Cover

Here's a few books I found that have the cover altered so you can see what it's really about.

The Bush memoir cracks me up and is spot on. And that Strunk and White book is exactly what
I thought it should have been called when I was in 8th grade. Hated to see Confederacy... in there, but it works.

The rest of the library can be found here

The Great Weigh In

Hey lard asses. Shall we have our first weigh in? I did mine today as I will be traveling soon and won't have a chance. When do you want to make the next weigh in? The holidays is a terrible time to start this, but it's better than making it a New Year's resolution. Post weights in the comments and we'll see how we do. Remember, this is just a starting point. Next weigh-in in two weeks (special holiday allowance)?

Male Bonding

Read a review of this band on Pitchfuck, and this sentence compelled me Forward to Purchase:

And then there are the hooks. The hustle, the energy, and the sheer number of them make this an easy album to love-- especially if you're in the mood for some feedback, Nirvana moves, and punk-rock energy along with your melodies.

It's pretty easy to like.

Get's Let This Starty Parted

Have a good weekend, and kindly Find The Produce.

How Many Ways Can You Say...

I found a mighty useful tool on the internets. It generates a seemingly infinite number of euphemisms for, well, you know...

The last time I had this much fun, I was 

exorcising the glistening weasel.

or perhaps..

They found him naked in the alley behind the bar, 

sniffing the groovy mushroom.

or maybe 

From behind the curtain came the unmistakable sounds of 

boxing the rubber area.

For more phrases click here

A Modest Proposal

The scale says 195.4 pounds, about 15 more than I'd like. Losing one or two pounds a week, making healthy, permanent lifestyle changes is the way to go.

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.

Anybody else want to take the challenge?  We can weigh in once a week and post it here for additional motivation.  Come on, ya fat pussies.

Interesting and Revealing

A Bit Confusing

Here is a reaction to Keith Richards' book by Mick Jagger. Except it isn't by Mick Jagger, it's by Bill Wyman. Except it's not THAT Bill Wyman, it's Bill Wyman the often irritating music journalist.

Regardless, it's a good read and makes some good points. As I understand it, this went around the innerwebs as actually being written by Sir Mick.

Unclear On The Concept

Happy Holidays, you bastards!

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Wow.

Christmas creep

I Want To Live Here

That is all.

What Having Children Feels Like

Yep, that's about right.

Gotdayum!

$239.99, and only available 'til October 2011?  It would take me at least until December 2011 to pay it off, if I bought it today ...

Anyone?

Anybody watching The Walking Dead? Thoughts?

Our lame fantasy league.....

...is nearing the playoff stretch. Let's recap:
1) Jay hasn't maintained his team and still beat me pretty handily last week with three inactive players. So much for excellence.
2) Joe's team is called the Cleveland Steamers. Indeed.
3) Eric and I are tied for supremacy. I have sent him a virtual face-slap with my virtual gloves and we will be dueling (virtually) this weekend for first place position.

The 'good' news? All eight teams make the playoffs in this format! Gentlemen, to the gridiron!

Shit

The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner died in LA today. Is it in poor taste to make a carbonite comment here?

Shit

Finally!

I was at the FSU - UF game this weekend. Oh how great it is to beat the Gators. And Maryland comes through and pantses NC State, so we're in the ACC Championship game next week! Go Seminoles!

I'm off to Vegas (no seriously) for the next couple days!

Stare Dad Comics

Ok, these are completely fucked up, but they make you laugh in a demented sort of way. Basically, this cartoon started it all, and now people use the graphics and add their own captions. The poor little boy comes to his dad with a problem. Dad can't be bothered and he stares him down. Hilarity ensues. The result is an example of demented parenting... or hours of fun.

If you like what you see here, and I think you do, you can find TONS more here. The greatest hits can be found here.

Educational gifts

I know you all are out shopping, but save a few dollars for these little beauties: undies with the 4th Amendment written out in metallic ink.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ya bunch of turkeys!

I Read A Book!

The wifey loaded a copy of Keith Richards' Life on her Kindle, so I took a stab and read it. It's a bit of a rambling affair, heavy on descriptions of the drugs taken (lots of heroin and pharmaceutical grade cocaine), the people involved (most you've never heard of), and the constant busts. The music obviously is in the forefront, and there are some cool songwriting stories -- Jagger wrote the lyrics to "Satisfaction" by a pool in Clear water, Fl and "It's Only Rock and Roll" was originally a Bowie/Jagger project that the band co-opted once they heard it.

The press made a big deal of how he mentions Jagger's "tiny todger" and called him Brenda and all that, but my impression was more that he went to great lengths to explain how important Mick was to him, sticking by him during all his drug and legal trouble, and how much he respected him as a writer and harmonica player, and that the big fallout was a result of Mick's piggybacking a solo contract on a Stones record deal and wanting to branch out from the Stones. That and he got pretty bitchy and wouldn't talk to the crew.

Bill Wyman, on the other hand, gets very little mercy, from Richards detailing how they only wanted him in the band originally because of his Vox amp and that their goal was to ditch him and keep the amp and talking about how he would pick girls out from the crowds outside the hotel, have them brought up to his room, serve them bad tea, then record their name in his ledger as scores. Richards notes that the chicks didn't come out disheveled and they clearly weren't in the room long enough to get their clothes off and put them back on, so it was just an effort to claim he'd bagged thousands of chicks.

He also talks a lot about Gram Parsons and how close the two were, sharing a bed while going cold turkey and scoring cheap Mexican dope in bad parts of LA, but also how much affection he had for him and how much Parsons influenced the Stones and the music business in general. And Mick hated him because he was jealous.

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more discussion of specific albums, outside of the making of Exile, and some of the later ones like "Dirty Work" and "Voodoo Lounge," but there was so much description of songwriting and how he developed his style of using alternative tuning, it's hard to complain.

All in all, a great read, but I'm such a fan, it's hard to be objective. I have to say it was pleasant having the Kindle on a business trip and not having to lug the big book around, but I also had to turn it off during take-off and landing, the pictures from the book look like shit on it, and well, now I wish I had the book on my shelf. So I guess my verdict is that reading with the Kindle was no problem, but like albums on vinyl, I still am not ready to ditch the traditional format.

UPDATE: I should say for classics and keepers, I'm not ready to ditch the traditional format. For your average read that's not a keeper, the Kindle is tits.

Fox News - Not Racist, But #1 With Racists

Maybe it's time I start watching The Simpsons again ...

"Gah! We're unbalanced!  It's not fair!"

Going once, going twice...

The album cover that John Lennon signed for his assassin is up for sale. Anybody got a spare $850,000?

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb

Dr. Strangelove: Sir! I have a plan!

[standing up from his wheelchair]
 
Dr. Strangelove: Mein Führer! I can walk!

Happy Friday, Ladies

So sad.  Let's keep these unfortunate children in our hearts and minds as we head into the weekend.

Ha Ha

This made me laugh.

Cat Power II

Anyone else think a LIGER was only found in Napoleon Dynamite's notebook? Turns out if you cross a male lion X female tiger, you can get a 900 lb cat, twice the size of either parent.

Cat Power

Wow.

I'm not sure if any of you other Bastards enjoy the mellow groove from time to time, but I for one love the old CSN (especially Stills - anybody ever heard 'Manassas'?) and other '60s Laurel Canyon stuff (I even like the Fucking Eagles until they get up to 'The Long Run').

For your consideration is the BBC's documentary "Hotel California: LA From the Byrds to the Eagles," which traces the Laurel Canyon scene from the early Byrds to the full-on corporatization of the scene (ie the Eagles). I made it through part one, and it's quite good.

C'mon, Dave, you've got some Joni Mitchell records, don't you?

Jedi Condom

Is that Vader or Dark Helmet on the package...