Ultranormal

Category: entertainment

  • I Have The Power!!!

    It’s sick and wrong, I know. I can’t tell you how disgusted I am by the whole thing. When I first saw it, I knew the end was near. What am I talking about? You don’t know? Oh, you’re gonna crap yourself. They’ve made a new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe!! It’s wrong in so many ways. Back in the Eighties, before you were born, there was a cartoon. There was even a movie. There were action figures with nipples, and a green tiger with fuzz on him. It was horrible.

    Now, He-Man’s a little leaner and has better hair, but it’s still the same old thing. You’d think people could do something cool like bring back the Shmoo’s. But no, it has to be muscle-bound platitude man, his green tiger and Skeletor. I blame professional wrestling.

    Did you know that they keep making new Transformers cartoons too? This is what I get for my intermittent insomnia. If only I could plan my sleepless nights for times when Cartoon Network actually has good stuff on, like Saturday and Sunday. If you haven’t watched them yet, check out Mission Hill, Harvey Birdman and Sealab 2021. They’re all brilliant.

    I’m gonna go drown in a vat of caffeine now and try to wake up.

  • Digging In The Dirt – For a Decade?

    Why didn’t anyone tell me Peter Gabriel released a new album? He did, and it’s been ordered. It’ll show up with my copy of My Neighbor Totoro sometime in December. Thankfully, you can download the whole album to “preview” it. It’s great. It’s not quite worth the decade it’s taken to get out, and he gets one black mark for including the song I Grieve from the City of Angels soundtrack on it. I love the song, but come on, the album averages out to one song per year since Us came out. I know the man’s been busy greying, but jeez. Really, the album’s beautiful. It’s more melancholy than Us. For some reason, it reminds me of the Birdy soundtrack more than anything else, and I can’t really place why.

    If you’ve got a fast connection, go get it right now (it’s a 69mb download, so you modem folks are SOL)!

  • How Did I Miss Them?

    Another gift from a friend, I got Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, and wow. This is an amazing album. It came out in 1991, but sounds like it could have come out yesterday. It sounds fresh and new, and combines all of my favorite bands. It sounds at times like Phish, Moby, Massive Attack and well, it sounds like everything. A great trippy happy groove album to keep you smiling. Check it out.

  • Through a Glass Darko

    I just finished watching Donnie Darko. I kept thinking of Harvey throughout the film. If you haven’t seen it, go rent the DVD right now. This is an intense moving film. It’s dark, beautifully acted and breathtaking to watch. Jake Gyllenhaal (sorry, I know I botched that, but am too ready for bed to go check the correct spelling) did a marvelous job keeping me guessing throughout. Is he crazy? Is Frank real? What is going on?

    I didn’t even really know until I watched some of the deleted scenes; I’m kind of sad that I now know. The movie is better as the journey than the destination. I loved the subtle late-Eighties touches: the music, the clothes (button-fly jeans… oh yes), the references to Back to the Future, the Halloween Costumes (RonaldMania was my favorite). It was so well done, I want to watch it again just for nuance and those little things I missed the first time around.

    Back to the Harvey connection. This movie felt like my generation’s Harvery. We have society’s reaction to the mentally ill, and the societal twist. This is Harvery for the cynical Prozac popping Ridalin kids from the Eighties. This is our search for what’s real and true in a world of 30-second issues, fallen idols and missing authority figures. It’s a great film, and one that may keep me up till the wee hours of the morning thinking about it… and don’t watch the deleted scenes if you want to interpret the meaning of the film for yourself.

  • Give Me Morphine!

    I’ve ripped all my Morphine albums now except Cure for Pain, which I’ve misplaced somewhere.

    Morphine was my favorite band of the 90’s. Their mellow bass driven lounge rock was perfect. Their first three albums, Good, Cure for Pain and Yes are essential members of any good music library and great artillery for self-indulgent pity parties, rainy evenings at home alone or car-music for a night out cruising the back streets of Tucson looking for a party where you know what street it’s not, but not the address of the house (sorry, that was a flashback).

    Like Swimming was an unfortunate smudge on the library. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not Cure for Pain. With Mark Sandman’s untimely death of a heart attack at the age of 36 (he looked a lot older than that… played a three-string bass ages you, I guess), I figured I was left with the four albums, and I’d never hear more. But, ‘lo and behold, along came The Night, my second favorite Morphine album. It’s the slowest moving and most morose, but the songs are some of Sandman’s best. All of them are better than every song on Like Swimming, and better than half the songs on Good or Yes. It doesn’t quite stack up to Cure for Pain for sheer impact, but it’s amazing.

    And to finish up, there’s B Side and Otherwise, an album you can skip unless you just want to be complete, and Bootleg Detroit, the band’s only release live album. It’s amazing. In the audio alone you can feel Sandman’s stage presence, and the band’s skill at creating a vibe in a room. The second song on the CD, Come Along sets the mood for the set perfectly and isn’t on any of their other albums. It’s almost the perfect live album. If only it were longer. I’m always left wanting more when I listen to it.

    This has ended up a lot longer than I intended, but I guess you can tell I love me some Morphine. I will be eternally grateful to my friend Kris for introducing me to the band. She made me a mix tape after a rough breakup of the best depressing songs ever. She has the musical Library of Congress in her head, sorted by theme. On the tape were You Look Like Rain and Gone for Good. I wore that tape out, and eventually wore out my copy of Cure for Pain. You will too.

  • Another Forgotten Album

    In my recent techno-obsession, I’ve forgotten all about Phish. Today, I’m listening to a bunch of their albums, and the first one I picked up is still my favorite. Billy Breathes is an amazing album. In the album’s 45 minutes, Phish manages to use all of their talent to create an album that sounds better than anything else they’ve done. It has all the punch, joy and great riffs of their other stuff without any of the self-indulgence. This is a great album if you want to try Phish on for size before plowing into their weirder stuff (or live albums).

  • This is Real?

    So, I’m watching MTV’s Real World preview. It’s in Vegas this season, and I think maybe they’ve gone too far. They’ve gotten the sluttiest kids they could find between the ages of 21 and 25, put them in a house and given them a job at a casino, and encouraged them to do every crazy thing they can think of and let MTV film it.

    Yeah, best season yet… Wait, it can’t be. San Francisco was the best season ever, bar none. It was the first season of The Real World that actually worked for me. The people had real jobs and a few of them were actually mature and knew who they were. The last five or six seasons, it’s been all kids who go on the show to “find themselves”. I’m sorry, but that got oooo-ooooold a loooo-ooooong time ago (Seattle was the turning point for me). Chicago was funny just to see how screwed up these kids could get in their own heads.

    Ok, enough about The Real World, you’d think I’m actually going to watch it (and you’d be right… doh!).

  • The Musical Memories – Underground

    I loved Ben Folds Five. I haven’t listened to any of the old albums in months because of my recent addiction to trancey techno stuff. I’m down here browsing (wondering what the hell I’m doing online at 10:50 on a Sunday evening with a splitting headache) listening to Underground, Best Imitation of Myself and their last album, with Narcolepsy and Don’t Change Your Plans (a song that reminds me of The Royal Tenenbaums for no good reason). The music is so infectiously happy without being stupid or vapid. It’s bouncy without being cliche, and intelligent without being snobbish. You can rock out to a piano, Virginia. Be proud of your White-man-rocking-underbite while you jam out, underground, underground, woooo, underground (everyone’s happy underground).

    I spent today recovering from painting the guest bedroom (mostly recovering from painting the ceiling). Painting ceilings sucks. There’s no graceful way to hold a roller on a six foot pole that won’t pull every delicate muscle in your back. And only a week recovered from my neck thing, you’d think I’d take it easy. Nope, I’m Mr. McPainty-Pants.

    I’m gonna go medicate and go to bed. See ya tomorrow morning, bright, early and online as usual.

  • How Easily We Forget

    How did I forget what an amazing album Radiohead‘s Amnesiac is?

    I know I’ve been posting a lot of music stuff lately, but there just isn’t really much else to talk about. I’m still not used to being back to work. I’m on my vacation bedtime (after 11:30pm, before 3am), but on my work wake-up schedule (8am), and it’s messing me up. I’m sitting here with a crazy headache, dry eyes, and a knot of anger, for no apparent reason, burning in my gut. I need a nap and a cookie.

  • I Was Right… Well, Halfway

    I was right yesterday. The music from the new Nissan “Line” commercials is from a song off the new Chemical Brothers album. It’s the first chorus from the song Hoops.