Death Cab For Cutie - "I Was Once A Loyal Lover"

Death Cab For Cutie - I Was Once A Loyal Lover / MP3 & Music Blog Song / The Hype Machine

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All my friends are forward-thinking
Getting hitched and quitting drinking
And I can feel them pulling away
As I'm resigned to stay the same

noo toons

Thanks to some housesitting gigs this past weekend, and this current week, I was able to go out music shopping for the first time in a while.


Death Cab for Cutie -- The Open Door

A fantastic offering to compliment the underappreciated Narrow Stairs.



Jandek -- Telegraph Melts

The Jandek "punk" album.



Mastodon -- Crack the Skye

The return of the Prog-Metal geniuses!



Neko Case -- Middle Cyclone

She's performing two nights next month; Joe got me a ticket to Friday night's show, and I kinda want to buy a ticket for Saturday night's show.



the Obits -- I Blame You

Yet again, Rick Froberg knocks another one into the stratosphere. If you're a Hot Snakes fan, this one makes a great companion to John Reis' Night Marchers.



the Skids -- Sweet Suburbia

A great "best of" collection from my newest obsession.


Also picked a few digital releases:
Butch Walker -- Here Comes the... EP
the Obits -- "One Cross Apiece" b/w "Put It in Writing"

films from the weekend

Street Trash
By far, one of the worst movies ever made -- it might even take the top honor of being the worst. And yet, watching it this past weekend was my 3rd or 4th time watching it. I still haven't made it all the way to the end, but I make it a little further each time.

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Cat Soup
A strange, surreal short animated film about a mischievous young kitten who traverses the land of the dead in order to save the soul of his older sister. Watching it is like watching someone else's dreams.

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Un Chant d'Amour
Jean Genet's only film short (which he would disown later in life) -- a completely silent (I think the clip above has an ambient soundtrack added to it) piece dealing with the chaste, unrequited love affair between two male prisoners. For 1950, it's kind of shocking how much cock is shown on screen.

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Leolo
Since Wellbutrin and Vodka mixed together help to form a makeshift hypnotic, I ended up sleeping through most of this one.

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The Phantom of the Paradise
A really horrible film that tries to fuse Faust and Phantom of the Opera by way of mid-70s rock music. I really hate this one, yet harbor some sort of fascination with it that I don't understand.

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I think tonight may be Motel Hell.

Holga

Until the Light Takes Us

Until the Light Takes Us
Saturday, 5/30/09, 9:30pm
Hollywood Theater

from IMDB:
Until the Light Takes Us is a feature length documentary chronicling the history, ideology and aesthetic of Norwegian black metal - a musical subculture infamous as much for a series of murders and church arsons as it is for its unique musical and visual aesthetics. This is the first (and only) film to truly shed light on a movement that has heretofore been shrouded in darkness and rumor and obscured by inaccurate and shallow depictions. Featuring exclusive interviews and verité with the musicians, a wealth of rare, seldom seen footage from the "Inner Circle"s earliest days, Until the Light Takes Us explores every aspect of the controversial movement that has captured the attention of the world. This is the movie that gets inside the minds and hearts of black metal's musicians. The filmmakers moved to Norway, living and filming there for two years. The movie is not about them though - it's about the extraordinary people and events that make black metal unique, unforgettable, and inevitable. This is black metal as seen through the eyes of those who created it, of those who live it, of those who are at the center of the story of black metal.

helps it go down easier

Bizarre-OH!

From Wikipedia:
Bizarro fiction is a contemporary literary genre noted for its focus on 'high weirdness.' Bizarro is described as 'literature's equivalent to the cult section at the video store' and a genre that 'strives not only to be strange, but fascinating, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun to read.'"

Recently, I have started to fall in love with the Bizarro genre, mainly through the writings of Carlton Mellick, III -- a local Portland author, generally credited as being a founder of the movement. I currently have three of his books in the "to read" pile next to my bed:




Apeshit
Apeshit is Mellick’s love letter to the great and terrible B-horror movie genre. Six trendy teenagers (three cheerleaders and three football players) go to an isolated cabin in the mountains for a weekend of drinking, partying, and crazy sex, only to find themselves in the middle of a life and death struggle against a horribly mutated psychotic freak that just won’t stay dead. Mellick parodies this horror cliché and twists it into something deeper and stranger. It is the literary equivalent of a grindhouse film. It is a splatterpunk’s wet dream. It is perhaps one of the most fucked up books ever written.





The Egg Man
It is a world where humans reproduce like insects, children are the property of corporations, and having an enormous 10-foot brain implanted into your skull is a grotesque sexual fetish.





The Faggiest Vampire
Deep in The Land of Broodsarrow, just outside the village of Gneirwil, and high on a cliff overlooking the Everbleed Sea, there stands the faggiest gothic castle that any mortal being has ever seen. Living in this ancient faggy castle is none other than the well-renowned vampire, Dargoth Van Gloomfang. The citizenry of Broodsarrow sure has its share of faggy vampires, but old Dargoth has always been by far the faggiest of them all. That is, until a new vampire came to town. A younger, hippper vampire. One that emits such a grand amount of fagginess that one cannot help but be completely overwhelmed by his presence. Now Dargoth Van Gloomfang must figure out a way to out-shine this young newcomer if he wishes to ever reclaim his throne as . . . the faggiest vampire.


If you enjoy the strange, or just need something different to read, give it a shot. It won't change your life, but it'll probably make you laugh in a way you never laughed before.

Holga shots

Pieces for the Left Hand

A student's suicide note is not what it seems. A high-school football rivalry turns absurd-and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren't identical at all - or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small American town, told in a conversational style, Pieces for the Left Hand is a stream of a hundred anecdotes, none much longer than a page. At once funny, bizarre, familiar and disturbing, these deceptively straightforward tales nevertheless shock and amaze through uncanny coincidence, tragic misunderstanding, strange occurrence, or sudden insight. Unposted letters, unexpected visitors, false memories - in Pieces for the Left Hand, these are the things that decide our fate. Wry and deadpan, powerful and philosophical, these addictive little fables reveal the everyday world as a strange and eerle place.


This is one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time.
You should read it too.

The Summer 2009 class schedule for Newspace has just been released. I was hoping to take a course that would teach me some basic negative scanning techniques, so that I could skip the middleman and develop my own film & scan my own negatives. However, the only class that involves negative scanning requires basic Photoshop skills, of which I have none.

So, I may just take the Beginner's Photoshop course this quarter and aim for the negative scanning course sometime in the fall.

Check-up Follow-up

Friday's doctor's appointment went fairly well.
Somewhere along the way in the time between making the appointment and showing up, I somehow forgot that I was scheduled for a full physical with this appointment.
Pro: Since I woke up late, I didn't have time to eat breakfast; so my bloodsugar levels and everything weren't wonky.
Con: Since I woke up late, I didn't really have time to shower. I was a bit embarrassed about that once the doctor started checking out certain, more intimate areas...oh well, hopefully she has seen worse.

After an hour of poking, prodding, groping, coughing, and blooddraining, they seemed surprised that I was in as good a state of health as I'm in. So, my outsides may be a bit flabby and gross, but my innards are awesome!

I also brought up the topic of the sebaceous cysts, but since she's a G.P. trained more in family medical care (and not too well-trained with operating on the scalp), my doctor told me to talk to a dermatologist to determine a removal procedure. So, we'll see...

Portland

Seattle, 4/24/09

color photos taken with Lomo Diana+

b&w photos taken with Agfa Clack

Holgabomb

One of my classmates from last weekend's Holga class -- a fellow co-worker of mine -- snapped this photo of me.
She was kinda pissed when she realized she would have to present the entire roll of film to the class.


My own negatives from that class remain unscanned.
They were mostly shit, so it's a good thing they're unseen right now.

But, I may try to scan the contact sheet and crop some of the acceptable images from that.



(photo courtesy of Sarah A.)

The Past and Pending

At times, it can be frustrating not leading what one would call a "professional" life, but it's just not how I operate. I don't think in such terms. Sure, I could likely make some more money on the side with my photography or my dogsitting experience if I approached it more professionally; however, I'd much prefer to retain a very light approach to such things and keep myself open to whatever may happen because of it.
Case in point, whenever I'm asked to house/dog-sit for people, I never give them a set price. I may tell them the average per day that most people pay me, or I may not tell them at all and leave it all up for them to decide -- sometimes that means cash payment, other times it means some sort of even trade: a nice dinner out, music/iTunes vouchers, etc. In terms of last night, it brought a ticket from Andy to one of the two sold-out Shins concerts at the Crystal Ballroom, in exchange for animal-sitting a few weeks ago.

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Last night, I met up with Andy (and a small group of his co-workers from the credit union) for dinner at Ringler's before heading upstairs to the sold-out Shins concert at the Crystal Ballroom. As usual, McMenamin's fare was less than impressive, but decent enough to not complain.

We finished dinner about 15 minutes before the show was scheduled to start, but somehow we managed to get settled in pretty close to the stage before the opening band came on. Seeing as how the place was beyond sold-out and doors had been open for nearly an hour, I was quite surprised at the location we stood.
The opening band, Delta Spirit, was decent enough to keep my attention throughout but nothing too new in the way of 'bar rock.' Though, I do have to acknowledge that their percussion was fucking incredible. If they spent more time developing that aspect of their sound, rather than on cliche 'plugged-in era' Bob Dylan rips, they might actually be something to take note of. As it stands, try and check 'em out if they're openers on a bill sometime, but don't worry if you miss them.
And, after the openers, the all-new Shins 2.0 took the stage.
One thing that always surprises me about seeing the Shins live is how loud they become in person. On their records, they take a bit of a psuedo-Twee approach to their sound -- with hushed layer on top of hushed layer adding a lot of dimension but no real depth. Even with Wincing the Night Away, they produced and mixed it to within an inch of its life but there's very little "oomph!" behind it all.
Somehow, they take the complete opposite approach to their live shows. And even more so with the new band members. Everything had a new sense of urgency and angst behind it that worked well to add a lot of volume to their sound (in more ways than one). They played completely new material, completely new arrangements of old favorites, old B-sides that they'd never played live before, a Beach Boys cover, a Neil Young cover, a snippet of a James Gang cover...everything you'd expect from the band, and even a little bit more.

These days, their tours have been few and far between, so if you get the chance, definitely check them out. James Mercer is writing some of the tightest, dreamy-est pop songs around.

And he's totally hot when bearded.

Xiu Xiu 35mm Film Project

This weekend, V. was nice enough to scan some of the photos I received from David Horvitz, as part of the 35mm Film Project from this past Jamie Stewart solo tour. He just posted a link to them on the Xiu Xiu site, so there should be a substantial rise in traffic for the next few days. If you wish, you can view them here.

Invasive thoughts

Sebaceous cysts.

I'm thinking of having mine removed soon.

It sounds like it will be a simple procedure, and there even may be non-surgical options available. But I won't know much at all until I talk to my doctor tomorrow.

Anyone care to discuss?

Beginning anew.

Yet another attempt at starting a blog.

Though hopefully, this one will amount to something, however trivial.