Here are a few pictures I took this week. The first few are from a trip to Crumbs on Saturday with my fiancé and the others I took last night while walking around my town. I had wanted to take a nighttime picture of the new Dunkin Donuts down the street. It’s really well lit and has a bunch of those strings of triangular flags that stores often have when they first open. There’s nothing else next to it that’s lit up at night so even though it’s on a main road with tons of other stuff around, if you’re looking at it straight on at night, it looks like a shining beacon of hope (?) with nothing else around it. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t get the shots to come out how I wanted them to. Oh well.
Oh, and rejoice because there are no pictures of cats in this bunch.
My fiance in the backseat on the way to Crumbs.
Another one in the backseat a few seconds later.
There was a cute display of cupcakes at Crumbs that had some awesome coloring. This is just the top shelf of them after I had some fun with the color in Lightroom.
Not much to say about this one really, but I'm surprised that cupcake even made it home.
This picture isn't really that great except for the streaks of light in the foreground from the passing cars. This was taken with a 5 second exposure on a busy street near my house. Two cars passed by as I was taking it.
The Harley-Davidson dearship near my house. I had actually set out to take some pictures of some other stuff, but snapped a few here on the way.
I couldn't get the pictures of the White Rose across the street to come out how I wanted so I just started shooting this pole instead.
This was my first attempt at HDR. I really had no idea what I was doing and was just playing around with stuff. I don't think it's that terrible, but I think the clock could be a bit better. HDR is cheating a bit, but if you can get a nice end result, I think that's what matters. No matter how hard I tried, there was no way I could get everything in this picture exposed properly in one shot. It was either get the clock and have everything else barely even visible or get everything else right and have the clock just be a big bright circle.
I liked this. The Crazies entertained me without dragging and without taking long to get going. While it was lacking slightly in the humor category and a little in the epic kill realm, it made up for it with tons of people being senselessly mowed down by the military, Though, that’s not really the point of the film.
The Crazies presents itself much like a zombie flick without the zombies, but focuses a lot less on the infected and more on a population’s reaction to the outbreak. Watching this film made me wonder how much of the original was an influence for M. Night Shyamalan when he made The Happening. That thought pretty much ended in me feeling like The Crazies is closer to what The Happening should have been than what that movie actually was…ignoring the face that The Happening went with suicidal over homicidal.
I’m not going to compare with the original because I don’t think there’s much of a point, but for me, The Crazies further solidifies my feelings that horror remakes are okay if done right. There have definitely been a ton of crappy ones–this film came with a trailer for the A Nightmare On Elm Street remake which looks relatively awful–but there have also been a ton of great ones as well. It comes down to being able to make a movie that differentiates enough with the original to make its existence worthwhile, but yet still remains true to the reason why the original existed.
Despite being predictable (what isn’t?), The Crazies has a lot of tension, keeps a fast pace, and gets down right terrifying at times. Check it out.
I’m disappointed. Alice In Wonderland wasn’t what I wanted it to be and I think Tim Burton is to blame. I never thought I’d ever say that, I generally love Tim Burton’s work, but this didn’t do it for me. It almost felt like Burton half-assed it instead of pushing himself forward and beyond previous work. Alice in Wonderland felt less like him adapting his style to the story and more like him adapting the story to a summation of is entire cinematic career over the last twenty or so years.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it, but I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time and I wanted more. The visuals looked great, but they didn’t look new or original or inspiring or anything that you would expect from Tim Burton.
Both Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway were weak as well, not terrible, but not what we’ve all come to expect. I can’t put my finger on what was off, but it wasn’t all there, even though I think Johnny Depp is the perfect casting choice for Mad Hatter. However, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen was the one strong point to this film. The tones in her voice and her facial expressions were perfect and her scenes were both interesting and funny in the exact way that I wanted the entire film to match with.
Also, Hatter’s “futterwacken” dance was just weird and didn’t feel like it belonged with the rest of the film.
I hate you. You are a terrible bank. My fiance and I use you for our joint account, but we are leaving you. This weekend, we will be opening a new account at a new bank and once we get everything switched over, we’re closing our account with you and we will never look back.
I wish that I could say that a slow and clumsy website–it took us days just to get both of us set up with logins that actually worked–and transfers that seem to take forever were the only reasons why I hate you, but I can’t. What put me over the edge is the fact that you call me constantly with marketing calls. Your tenacity is almost impressive, actually. This has been going on for over six months now. At least twice a week.
What really gets me about these calls is that they come from numbers all over the country. Luckily, I used my Google Voice number instead of my cell number so it is easy to block numbers, but the myriad of numbers from different area codes around the country that you use is astounding. And now the most recent area codes that you’ve moved on to are local to me. The interesting thing here is that when I block one of your phone numbers, you get a message saying that my number is not in service, but you are not deterred, you see right through this and, instead of removing the my number from your listed under the impression that the number is no longer valid, you just change the number that you call from. Very clever, Bank of America. Very clever.
When I don’t answer your calls, which is almost always the case as I don’t answer numbers I don’t know, you don’t even leave a real message. Many times, it’s just a blank two-second message. Other times, there’s the tail end of a recording. If I try to call this number back, it either beeps a few times and then hangs up on me, does not answer at all, or takes me to a voice menu that hangs up on me no matter which option I select. I don’t even get what you’re going for here. If you’re trying to market something to me, don’t you want me to be able to get back to you? This must be some trick you’ve devised that is just too complex for me to understand.
At this point, you might be wondering how I actually know that it’s you calling me since you don’t leave me messages and I don’t usually answer. Well, I have answered a few times. Each time, I am first taken to a recording and then I eventually get connected to a kind representative from your company that asks to speak with me. Once I tell her that she is speaking with the person she’s looking for, me, she starts an extremely long speech about whatever it is that you’re trying sell me. Seriously, I don’t even know. She kept going for so long that I couldn’t pay attention anymore. She wouldn’t stop either. It was a waste of time for all parties involved. And each time, at the end of the speech, I kindly said that I was not interested and would like to be removed from the calling list. I also stated that the number being called is a cell phone. This is only kind of a lie, as my Google Voice number only forwards to my cell. Every time, the representative tells me that she will have my number removed, but that it could take 30 days. First of all, I know that it doesn’t really take 30 days to remove a number from a calling list. It takes a couple clicks in a computer that’s that. Second of all, I was never removed from any list. This has been going on for well over six months and I still get calls.
What will it take, Bank of America?! Honestly, leave me alone. It is these calls that are driving me away from your bank. I will never do business with you again and I will also share this story with anyone that will listen. I wish that I had listened to the others that have hated on you for all kinds of other reasons.
Last night’s The Playlist was one of those ones that I wish I could have every week. Everything just fell right into place, the music flowed perfectly from one song to another and there was so much music I wanted to play that I could have filled two hours without even trying. When there’s that much music to work with, it’s so easy to get by without any filler songs and I think that really comes across over the air. It also allows you to do things like starting and ending a set with songs by artists linked by Jenny Lewis–Jason Boesel and The Watson Twins. I got one request that I had no problem playing, World/Inferno Friendship Society fit in so perfectly. I also was able to pull off playing two local bands, Screaming Females and Home Blitz.
But besides the music, I also felt like my mic breaks were coming even more naturally than normal. There was no struggling to find something to say or rambling messes that I didn’t know how to get out of. So, it was a fun show all around and I got to snap a few pictures while I was in the studio.
Here’s the playlist, Facebookers, click on over to the original…
I’ve only had my digital SLR, a Canon T1i, for about two months, but I decided that it would be worth it to pick up a second lens. Most of my picture taking so far has been at home and the lighting here is awful. I just can’t get enough light for anything without pumping the ISO up to 800 or 1600 or using impossibly slow shutter speeds. My cat has been my most frequent subject so a faster shutter speed is necessary. I’ve also been photographing a lot of food while fiance cooks dinner and whipping out a tripod for that is too much of a pain in the ass and just results in the food getting cold while I set everything up. So I decided a faster lens would be worth it for me even though I’m only a couple months into this brand new hobby of mine.
I went with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, it’s a very cheap lens–I got it for under $100 with free shipping. I was skeptical of getting such a cheap lens after all that I’ve been reading about photography and equipment (let’s just say it’s been a lot), but all the reviews for it seemed very consistent. It’s cheap looking and feeling and the focusing is loud and slow. These reviews were spot on. This thing is entirely plastic, except for the glass, of course, and feels super cheap. Focusing seems to take ages even just compared to the kit lens I have (Canon EF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 IS) and it’s very loud. When I got home and saw the package on the step, I ran inside, opened it up, and popped it on right away. I opened the aperture up all the way and when I went to snap my first shot, I nearly jumped when I heard it focus.
But at the other end of the spectrum, all of the reviews also mentioned that for the money, it takes great pictures. And despite all of the complaints, it was mentioned in a few articles I read about photographing bands–something I’d like to do occasionally–so I figured it’d be worth a try. So far, I have to agree, the shots come out pretty nice. In addition to the ability to use faster shutter speeds and a lower ISO thanks to the wider aperture, I was also excited about being able to play more with shorter depths of fields. I’ve read a lot about being careful with small depths of field because you can end up with part of a face in focus and part of it out of focus. I couldn’t even imagine this until I got this lens, it just wasn’t possible with f/3.5. But I quickly found out that f/1.8 is wide enough to do this. I snapped a couple pictures of my cat while she was laying on my bed and her nose was perfectly focused, yet her eyes were blurry. It was kind of neat, but obviously not what I was going for. So while I’m having fun playing around with this, it’s definitely just an additional thing to be careful of. Though, with the DOF just right, everything looks so much better and your eyes instantly go right to the subject with no distractions.
One additional thing to note about this lens though, is that 50mm is a bit longer than I would have liked for a prime. I didn’t think it would be too bad, but I’m finding that I have to take 2-5 steps back instead of getting really up close and personal with the subject. For some shots, like with the cat, this is actually kind of nice because I don’t grab her attention away from what she’s doing as much. For other things, like dinner, it’s difficult to get everything in the frame. I don’t think 50mm would be too bad on a full-frame SLR, but on a sub-frame with a crop factor of 1.6, the lens behaves more like it’s 80mm (see, I’ve been reading up a lot!). Oh well, I’ll probably appreciate this more when I’m photographing bands.
Here are a bunch of shots I’ve taken with the lens so far. Again, there’s a lot of my cat, I swear I’m not a crazy cat lady, or even a lady at all, but I didn’t like many of the ones I took of anything not cat.
I've posted other pictures of the Godzilla in the air studio at the radio station before, you know the guy covered in dust, but the little dude at the bottom is new. Unfortunately, I had to crop this at a weird ratio.
For some reason, I really like taking these kind of shots of the console.
Just an Eels album.
DJ Tanner getting ready to start his show right after mine.
This is just a stack of CDs, but I love the focus and the accidental affect going down the right side of the stack.
This is one of the first shots I took with the lens.
The first few attempts at this shot resulted in too short of a depth of field. I couldn't get her eyes in focus at first.
With this shot, I actually got the depth of field exactly how I wanted it.
She was really focused on the dinner my fiance was cooking, I just jumped in the middle.
I'm actually not sure what she was looking at when I took this. I think it might have been my foot as I was laying on the ground.
Sometimes, you just have appreciate the little things. For example, on the way to work the morning, I was behind a Honda Accord that had a Superman logo in place of the Honda emblem. This totally made my day and I’m okay with that.
Okay, so here are a few more cat pictures. I just couldn’t help it. She was laying there looking so cute and the lighting was the best I’ve ever seen in my apartment so I had to go for it. Be afraid for when my new (faster) lens gets here and I can get more shots in here.
You can tell that's her blanket now be all the hair on it. She loves that spot next to the radiator.
After this one, she went back to sleep.
Yup, back to sleep.
This is clearly not my cat. It's actually my friend's cat that likes to hang out on top of their cabinets.
Nothing special, really. It's just an artificial flower that my mom was using as a centerpiece.
We had another snow day here in New Jersey, so in between doing some work from home and digging out our cars, I did a little photoshoot with Leela while she was laying on the bed.
I got a ton of these kind of shots of her. This is one of the best.
This one has better lighting.
Here's a slightly different angle.
I took this one a few minutes later when I realized she wasn't done being a diva yet.
I found out that if I let the camera strap dangle, it would entertain her to no end. This helped to keep her looking at the camera. Interestingly, you can see that the color of the sheets is actually reflecting off of her.
This is a rare shot where she's not facing the camera and it actually came out decently. She almost looks dignified. Almost.
The Playlist last night felt like it was packed with new stuff by known bands. As much as I love finding out about new bands, it’s awesome to have a ton of stuff to play by bands that I already love; it’s easier to get excited about what I’m playing because it’s something I know. This is definitely something that came out last night for me, I felt really into it. And I feel like this is going to be a recurring theme for the year too with everything that’s going to be coming out, it seems like every single day I see another band I love announce an album for this year.
She & Him have a new album coming out next month–you can hear their new single “Thieves” on Stereogum, it rules. The Hold Steady and Murder By Death both have records coming out on May 4th and Gaslight Anthem, Minus the Bear, and a ton more bands have records coming out as well. Oh, and The Thermals posted a new single called “Canada” on their MySpace page. It’s sweet and catchy with more “woah-oh-oh-ohs” than an entire Less Than Jake album. It’s going to be a crazy year.
In the last week, I found some time to check out the new stuff by Eels, Magnetic Fields, The Watson Twins, and Hey Young Believer. All awesome. The Hey Young Believer album reminds me a lot of a band called Del Cielo that played the ZEN House a few times when I used to do shows in college, and I’m down with that. I just wish the album wasn’t 64 minutes long. It’s a bit too long.
Anyway, I went way out on a tangent, but here’s the playlist for last night’s show. I actually ended up playing the new Alkaline Trio. I wasn’t planning on it, but I had the song stuck in my head so I figured I’d just go for it. If you’re reading on Facebook, you know the drill, head on over to the original or you’ll just see a jumbled mess below.
I can’t believe it had been three weeks since my last radio show. Soooo long. I walked into the studio to a lot of great new music to check out. New stuff by The Magnetic Fields, Eels, and The Watson Twins, as well as the Spoon full-length. There was more too that I didn’t even get to check out.
The show itself was pretty decent actually. It’s nice to have a lot of music to work with, especially when you confine you show to strictly new stuff. There was a lot that I just couldn’t fit it which sucks, but it’s better than struggling to fill the time which is sometimes the case.
Unfortunately, I’ve been finding that I have very little time to listen to music anymore. Work has been too hectic to really be able to have my headphones on and I don’t have a solo commute to work anymore. So I don’t know when I’m going to get to catch up. I feel like I’m months and months behind. Oh well.
Anyway, here’s the playlist from last night. And, as always, if you’re reading this on Facebook, you’ll need to click to the original or you’ll just get a jumbled mess. Screw you, Facebook, for removing my HTML tables.
The three of these shots are completely unrelated, but I took them all this past weekend so I figured that I’d post them together.
My fiancé hiding under the covers. It was a simple shot, but she was starting to get annoyed as I fired off at least 50 different shots while she was just trying to avoid the camera.
A snow dragon in the yard across the street from mine. I swear this was a lot brighter and more vibrant when I was looking at it on my MacBook Pro. Oh well.
I’m not going to get into my feelings on Valentine’s Day the holiday. I’ll just leave it at the fact that I have mixed feelings about it, there are things I like, and a lot of things I hate. What I’m making this post about is to talk about the movie Valentine’s Day.
The flick was decent, not great. I had very low expectations, so maybe that helped, but it probably didn’t hurt either that there was a huge cast of names I like. Valentine’s Day is another romantic comedy that follows around the story of a bunch of couples in love. It’s roughly the same as New York, I Love You, which in turn is a rip off of Love Actually. I should say that this film is not only slightly better than New York, I Love You, but also even more of a rip off of Love Actually, right down to the young kid who even looks the same.
The problem with Valentine’s Day, though is that none of the stories were really that great and there were too many of them. Sure, they all connected, but I feel like the connections were almost a bit forced and unrealistic. However, at the same time, there are enough little laughs and actors that I enjoy to have made the trip to the theater worth it.
This burger is a ton bigger than it looks in this picture
I might be in love with a burger. Is that weird? I don’t even care.
My fiance and I had a can of chipotles left over from the chipotle chocolate cupcakes she made yesterday that we were trying to figure out what to do with when it hit us that we should chop them up and mix them into some ground beef for some burgers. So we got a full pound of ground beef, chopped up a chipotle, and mixed it all in. We made two eight-ounce burgers from this and instead of cooking them in a pan, on a grill, or any other way that most people do, we steamed them, which is something that I’ve been all about lately.
We discovered the idea of steaming burgers after watching an episode of Man vs. Food a couple of months ago and we haven’t looked back since. I knew that steaming would end up coming out great if we tried it, but I did not expect the actual results we got. It was incredible. All of the juice and moistness stuck with the burger. The burger cooked the same way all the way through. As much as I like the taste of a grilled burger, it just can’t compete. A slight char that I used to love just can’t compare with a burger that is the same on the inside as it is on the outside. And the only flavor in the burger is from the burger itself instead of being a mix from the grill, the flame, and the meat. It’s just simply incredible the taste you get.
So this was our first time with chipotles mixed in and I was blown away from the first bite. I have never tasted a burger with this much flavor before. It was juicy and spicy. Everything I could have hoped for. And it was huge. Steaming the burger helps it retain more without shrinking so these burgers were as big after being cooked as they were before. What is even more incredible about the amazing level of flavor is that it was achieved with just ground beef, chipotle, and cheese. Nothing else. Even the gourmet burgers that you get at most restaurants that have various rubs, spices, and toppings can’t compete with this. The difference is that most of these places just treat the outside of the burger and don’t get the flavor all the way through. Or they rely on piling a bunch of, albeit delicious, toppings on. Our burgers didn’t need any of them, they spoke for themselves.
Bottom line, if you’re not steaming your burgers at home, you’re missing out.
It’s been a while since I’ve done my radio show. Last week I was in Disney and I couldn’t make it last night either because of the snow. I think I’m getting withdrawal, I’m missing it a lot, but barring Snowmageddon 3, I will be there next week . Anyway instead of making it to my radio show, I stood outside in the street in front of my house and took some pictures of the snow. I took about ten of them, but there was just one that I actually liked.
Last week, I took a trip to Disney World and it was absolutely amazing. It truly is the place where dreams come true! Maybe I’m just saying that because I asked my girlfriend to marry me there (more on that in a soon-to-come post) and she said yes, but that place is way too much fun.
Rather than go on and on about how much I love Disney World and how we’re already planning our next trip in just slightly less than a year, I decided to just post some of the pictures that I took while there. Overall, I took almost 1,250 pictures between my SLR, my point-and-shoot, and both of our iPhones. That was a lot to go through and I did a lot of touching up on the exposures and coloring and such. It took a few days of just sitting here on the couch with my laptop, but I’m glad I did it. I didn’t take the time to do any noise reduction or spot removal or anything fancy like that that I don’t know how to do yet, but oh well.
So here are my favorite shots from the trip. You should be able to click for a bigger version.
Just the castle at night.
Some plates in the gift shop at the hotel.
This is the best picture I've ever taken. No post-processing needed.
"Norway."
I actually took this while holding the camera by hand.
I love Legos.
I should have let more light in.
I think this one looks cool. Not the best blurred light photo ever, but the colors are nice.
Eh.
Believe it or not, but I didn't touch this photo in any editing software.
For a quick setup, the result was pretty decent.
Not as good as the last one, but I like the trees on the right side.
Some jugs. I can't decide if I like the focal point or not, actually.
I don't even think I stopped walking for this one. I don't know how it came out.
Yeti Palace!
I just took this one while waiting for my fiance to come back from the bathroom.
"Everest"
This is another one that I didn't really stop to set up much.
Another gift shop shot. Not the last either.
Mickey and Minnie.
I think this was in the store in "Japan."
This one would be a little better if it weren't for that guy in the middle there.
Alright, so Alkaline Trio has seriously sucked after Good Mourning–which was a great friggin’ record. This is a new video they posted for a song off their upcoming album, whatever the hell it’s called. The song is called “This Addition” and it isn’t terrible. It’s not great either though. It sounds like they thought about sounding good again and going back more to the way they sounded seven or eight years ago and then got lazy about halfway in. It’s listenable though.
Skiba looks ridiculous.
Click here for the video. Apparently, WordPress doesn’t like to embed MySpace videos.
It was a decent show last night. Not super amazing, but relatively solid. There wasn’t too much to comment on in my mic breaks though…and I was competing with Obama. But despite competing with Obama, I did get a request for Budos Band which I was able to fit in.
I finally got to check out some Bad Lieutenant (members of New Order) as we’ve got the album in now. Pretty good, I’d say. I’ll have to listen to more later though.
That’s really about it so here’s the playlist; if you’re reading on Facebook, you’ll have to click the link to the original or it will just be a jumbled mess.
Okay, so I finally saw Avatar. I’m the last person on Earth to have seen this, I think. What’s left to say about it? Really? The effects were incredible. Nothing else is even remotely notable about it in either direction. It comes down to this, see it in IMAX 3D in the theater or don’t ever see it. Pretty simple.
I actually saw The Lovely Bones last weekend and meant to post about it, but completely forgot. My girlfriend had been wanting to see this for months. She was really excited about it, but the weird limited release thing that they did with it was incredibly annoying, especially since the full release wasn’t listed right away. I’ve never read the book myself so I had no personal interest in seeing it other than the fact that the lady was really excited for it. However, I actually liked it quite a bit.
The flick was definitely a bit long feeling, but it was more than tolerable. I don’t think there was anything that could have been cut out. And the length was partially a side affect of what was also one of the best parts about the movie, Peter Jackson’s absolutely amazing visuals which were quite thoroughly shown off. The lush landscapes and overall beauty of the in-between world were incredible. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know what I’m talking about. But to me, it was the camera work that made The Lovely Bones so visually appealing.
Beyond the visuals though, there is a lot of substance to The Lovely Bones, it’s not all eye candy and no story. Having not read the book, it’s hard to comment on this fairly, but I can’t say that I expected it to get as intense as it did at certain times. I actually felt pretty uncomfortable for a while.
I don’t know, if you read the book or you want to see the polar opposite of Peter Jackson’s early work like Dead Alive and Bad Taste, this is probably for you.
Great show this week, definitely a huge bounce back from last week’s disaster. I felt completely on top of it all and it was a return to more of the randomness that normally makes up The Playlist. For the past month or so, I’ve been picking out my entire playlist ahead of time instead of merely grabbing about fifty CDs to work from and then just flying by the seat of my pants during the show. I finally returned to the unplanned style last night and, even though it’s a bit harder to do a show that way, it’s a ton more fun and comes with a greater connection to the listener.
My only low points of the show were the Erik Hassle and Twilight Hours songs that I played. I’d never heard either before and thought they would fit in well based on the reviews on the albums. I was wrong. Definitely not a fan of either, but that’s one of my favorite things about the way I do The Playlist. It’s not only an adventure for the listener, but it is for me as well. I play a lot of music that I haven’t listened to yet on the show. To sound overly cheesy, I feel like it makes every week a journey that the listener and I take together.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from those two are the albums by Dawn Landes, Thomas Function, and Spoon. Spoon’s Transference is an excellent follow up to Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. While not quite as good, it gets very close. And before next week, I want to spend some time with the Taylor Hollingsworth and Curtis Harvey albums as well. I liked the songs I played a lot so I’m anxious to give the rest of each album a listen.
On a final note, last night was actually the first time I’ve ever heard Vampire Weekend. It’s not like I haven’t heard of them seemingly incessantly for quite some time now, but I just never actually heard their music. I guess it had something to do with the people who were obsessing over them? I mean, nothing against them, but the people that always talked about Vampire Weekend seemed to be people that had different tastes than I do. So I always figured it was something I wouldn’t be into. I was kind of impressed though.
Alright, that’s all I have to blabber about this week so I’ll just give you the playlist, but remember, if you’re reading on Facebook, you’ll have to click the link to the original or it will just be a jumbled mess.
One of my favorite pictures that I've taken so far, this is the console that we use in the studio. I really like how I got the lighting and focus for this one. It came out exactly as I wanted it to.
This week’s edition of The Playlist was probably the worst show that I’ve done in the last year. Probably longer, actually. I don’t know, I just felt incredibly off. I had nothing to say, I couldn’t really focus. I was just all kinds of uninterested. It’s weird too because I had a lot of new music to play this week for the first time in about a month. Maybe it was just because of the rough day that I had at work prior? Let’s say that.
I still need to check a lot of this music out, but I’m very excited about the Thomas Function and Dawn Landes records. I don’t really know anything about either of them, but the songs I played last night were awesome. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Just like last week, I brought my camera with me to take some pictures around the studio. I turned the lights up a little brighter this time which helped a lot. I took a few shots that I liked a lot so I figured that I’d share them with you. The one up above is probably my favorite. It’s just the console in the studio, but I like how the focus and lighting came out a lot. At the bottom, there’s a shot of a random section of the CD library and one of the bulletin board outside the studio.
Here’s the playlist from the show and if you’re reading this on Facebook, remember that you’ll need to click to the original since Facebook drops the table formatting.
This is the bulletin board outside of the air studio. Currently, it has a bunch of our DJs' top 10 lists for 2009. I don't know why I didn't focus on my own though.
This is a random second of our CD library that I took from an angle. Nothing to special, but I like how it came out. I took about 30 different pictures at all kinds of different angles and settings before I got this one.
Cloudy With a Chance Of Meatballs is completely outrageous and seriously hilarious! I definitely wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, but it was pretty much perfect. There are a lot of really good laughs to be had from this flick. They’re mostly cheesy and cliché, but they work every time. At the same time, the movie keeps a nice pace with some action spread around and nothing getting too slow for too long. And I’d say that the animation for this one is slightly above average for a non-Pixar CGI flick. It’s very good and definitely included a super cute and nerdy animated chick that I may or may not have a crush on now.
As with a lot of these CGI movies lately, the voice cast is pretty damn stacked. You’ve got Bill Hader, Anna Farris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce friggn’ Campbell, Mr. T (yup), Bobb’e J. Thompson (that kid from Role Models. I love this kid), NPH, Al Roker, and Will Forte. That’s a lot of great names right there! Loved it!
One of the best things about this movie is the disaster movie parody aspect of it. There were some very clear influences from and references to real disaster movies like Twister, Armageddon, Dante’s Peak, and The Day After Tomorrow. But the it’s done very well and not at all like what I’m sure Disaster Movie, which I haven’t actually seen, was. Instead of just throwing things in just for the sake of being funny, they use a collection of parodies that work together to create the “perfect food storm” which I promise you looked as delicious as it sounds.
Something that I got out of this movie that I didn’t expect though was the realization that I definitely prefer for movies that are based on books, even children’s books, to keep things very different. With a few exceptions, I prefer when movies take the basic idea of a book and then do something different with it. There isn’t much of a point to following the book exactly or even trying to get real close to it. A film will never be exactly the same as the book and when you try to get close, it’s those little differences that tend to take away from the film rather than add to it. And besides, if it’s exactly the same, what’s the point? To reach out to people who are too lazy to read? But if you just take that basic idea and sort of re-imagine it or simply use it as your inspiration, you have many more possibilities. You get to do something different and run less of a risk of completely ruining the book. You get to pay homage while still maintaining your own creativity.
Last night’s show was a bit interesting since there hasn’t been any new music to work with in a few weeks. It’s just a slow time of year, but I think I made due alright though. For the most part, I felt really, really on. I had things working just the way I wanted and my mic breaks came more naturally than normal with that conversationy type feel that radio DJs strive for. That is except for the completely botched one where I got confused by a CD that was put back in the wrong case, but I think I recovered nicely from that mess.
So on the music front, there’s not really anything to highlight that I haven’t spoken about before, but I did snag a shot of the Godzilla we have standing at the top of our main rack of equipment in the air studio. It was hard to snap the shot being that it’s up on top of a rack of equipment and I’m a short guy. The positioning of the lighting in the room didn’t help much either; it was difficult to keep all of the lights out of the shot. This was the best of the shots I took last night, but it’s still not that great. Though, to be fair, I couldn’t really focus on shooting while I was trying to do a radio show.
Here’s the list of what I played, some of it was reaching back a few months, but that’s okay. And as usual, Facebook will drop the table formatting and just give a jumble of words so click the original if you need to!
First of all, I don’t get why everyone is hating on 2009 so much. I feel like people do this every year. One year ends and everyone hates on it saying it was terrible. But it’s the same routine every year. Maybe you have your reasons, but I bet some good shit happened to you too. Sure, a lot of celebrities died in 2009. A lot. But, you know what? You don’t know those people! Yes, it’s terrible for them and their families and friends and some of them probably brought some joy into your life through their work, but still, you don’t know them personally so don’t let that make you feel like it was a bad year. You know, if that’s your reason–hey! I’ve heard it! But that’s besides the point. Maybe that’s not your reason for hating 2009, maybe you’ve got some good personal reason and that’s fine. Maybe the recession hit you or your family hard. Fair enough. I’ll give you that, but I know one guy who would say that being laid off right in the beginning of the year was the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Anyway, the fact seems to be that people tend to hate on every year. A year ago, I was sick of everyone calling 2008 “tw0-thousand hate.” Now, I’m sick of everyone saying that 2010 better be better than 2009. People like to focus on the negative things.
I’m sure that if you think about it, there were plenty of good things that happened to you or that you did in 2009. I took up snowboarding, went sky diving for the first time, went to Paris and London, went to Chicago again, started dating the girl of my dreams, got more serious about running, spent and awesome weekend in New Hampshire with some great friends, saw a ton of great movies. The list goes on and on, but I’ll stop. There were some bad things that happened too–my dog dying being at the top of the list–and ultimately, the thing I wanted to do most in 2009 didn’t happen, but fuck it, why worry about that stuff if you don’t have to? And it’s funny, while I was going and grabbing those links back there–I had to sort through almost 200 posts from 2009–I realized that there was even more great stuff in 2009 that I had forgotten about. Hell, I went on a first date on Valentine’s Day only to never go on another date with the girl again. I totally had forgotten about that and that’s great story potential right there!
But anyway, this post is about 2010, right? Right. I think this is going to be a great year too. I hope so, at least. I’ve got some little goals. I’m going to be running my first half marathon, I’m going to Disney, I’m hoping to make good on my plan to one day move to Chicago, and I’m taking up photography. For Christmas, I got a beautiful Canon EOS t1i digital SLR. I don’t really know how to use it very well yet. I mean, I know what most of the buttons do and all that, but just getting my pictures to look decent is going to take a while. I’m really excited about it though. I’ve wanted to get a nice camera for years and years, but I was always afraid that I’d never use it because I wouldn’t want to carry the thing around all the time. Well, I got a over that. I take thousands and thousands of pictures on my little point-and-shoot, a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, and it’s great, but it definitely feels lacking. It will still get a ton of use, but there are plenty of times where I know ahead of time that I’m going to want to take some really nice photos. And those will be the times that I have my SLR with me. What I’m getting at here with the photography thing is that if all goes the way that I hope it does, I’ll have a lot of great pictures to post here. And post I will! I’m going to try to post more of other stuff as well this year, but we’ll see.
But for now, here are pretty much the best shots I’ve take so far with my camera. They’re all of my cat, but she makes for a great subject and the past couple of days have been way too cold and windy to go outside. Obviously, you can click them for larger versions.
I trekked out to the movie theater this past weekend to catch Avatar in IMAX 3D. I had every plan of executing my normal pre-noon movie viewing experience only to find that in the post-Christmas frenzy of gift card spending and people having time off from work, they were at the movie theater too. What is normally a beacon of perfect cinematic consumption was instead a jam-packed hell-hole. Avatar was sold out. Until late that night. But since I was already there, I got a ticket for Sherlock Holmes instead. It was a movie I wanted to see, but wasn’t going to stress over finding a chance to make it out to the theater for. Well, I’m glad I did see it!
I never read much (read: any) Sherlock Holmes, but this movie felt pretty on. The story was engaging and the pace of the movie left not a single dull moment. There was no point in which I was wishing they would just move it along already. I really had a good time from beginning to end. There was a lot of great action that made sure to never go on for too long and the humor and funny little quips were thrown in in the exact perfect amount so as to never get too campy.
I must say, though, the best part of this flick was Robert Downey Jr. I mean seriously, talk about come backs! Since Iron Man, he’s been on fire and Sherlock Holmes is no different. Great selection for the role. Really, the whole cast did a great job…except for maybe Rachel McAdams, but I’m probably just being biased since I’m not a big fan.
I got a couple of new shirts for Christmas this year. The first is a neat little take on the Simpsons that my girlfriend got me from Threadless and the second, a gift from my girlfriend’s parents, is a flashback to one of my favorite shows of my childhood, Salute Your Shorts, featuring Blake Sennett of Rilo Kiley.
This week’s show was my countdown of my top 10 albums of 2009. It was an easy show to do since I picked out everything beforehand. I opened up with a few honorable mentions and then went right into the top 10. I ended with a Thorns Of Life track. I figured that bootleg from 924 Gilman St. was one of my most listened to records in the early part of the year so I should play something from it. The only real difficult part of this year’s countdown was trying to find a clean track from the Dear Landlord album. Everything I wanted to play had profanity in it and I didn’t have time to edit something out. I could have done it on the fly, but I never like leaving it to that. Don’t want to risk getting distracted and missing it.
So here’s the playlist (if you’re reading via Facebook, it’s going to be a jumbled mess since their import sucks. Click to read the original instead.)…
Camera Obscura
French Navy
My Maudlin Career
Grizzly Bear
Two Weeks
Veckatimest
Wilco
Wilco (The Song)
Wilco (The Album)
Future Of The Left
The Hope That House Built
Travels With Myself And Another
NOFX
Creeping Out Sarah
Coaster
Conor Oberst And The Mystic Valley Band
Nikorette
Outer South
Dear Landlord
Lake Ontario
Dream Homes
Monsters Of Folk
Man Named Truth
Monsters Of Folk
Coconut Records
Microphone
Davy
M. Ward
Rave On
Hold Time
The Lawrence Arms
The Slowest Drink In The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City
2009 was a pretty fucking awesome year! Seriously. I’ll probably make another post about the rest, but there were some amazing movies and some great records that came out.
Top 10 Albums
A lot of people are making lists for the decade, but I decided that I just couldn’t do that. It was too difficult of a task. So I stuck with just doing a top 10 favorite records for the year. Inpreviousyears, I’ve done bigger lists, but I’m keeping it small this year. And, as usual, this is a list of my favorite records, kind of like a personal playlist, rather than ones that I would say are the best.
Anyway, the list is below and I’ll also be counting this list on The Playlist with The Reverend on 90.3 The Core tonight at 9pm! Make sure to tune in. I’ll be playing one song from each album.
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone – Anti
Frank Turner – Poetry Of The Deed – Epitaph
The Lawrence Arms – Buttsweat And Tears – Fat Wreck Chords
M. Ward – Hold Time – Merge
Coconut Records – Davy – Young Baby Records
Monsters of Folk – Monsters Of Folk – Shangri-La
Dear Landlord – Dream Homes – No Idea
Conor Oberst And the Mystic Valley Band – Outer South – Merge
NOFX – Frisbee/Coaster – Fat Wreck Chords
Future Of The Left – Travels with Myself and Another – 4AD
And besides those, there are a few honorable mentions:
Cheap Girls – My Roaring 20s
Sonic Youth – The Eternal
The Decemberists – The Hazards Of Love
Mason Jennings – Blood Of Man
Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
You know, I almost wanted to put Lady GaGa on that list somewhere. I think I’ve spent some serious time in the second half of this year discovering a love for her. I never would have thought that I’d think so highly of her, but she’s pretty friggin’ awesome. However, I just can’t say that The Fame Monster was that great overall. It’s good for a few really great songs, but there’s also a lot of filler. Oh well.
And 2010 is already looking like it’s going to be a great year with new records by Murder By Death, Minus The Bear, Against Me!, Spoon, She And Him, and more already announced. I can’t wait!
Top 10 Movies
I actually had a much harder time making my list of top 10 movies for the year. There were a TON of good flicks this year and there were so many that I just didn’t have time to see either! Ultimately, these were my favorites:
So there you have it, my favorite albums and movies of the year. I’m hoping to post another entry about other things from 2009 if I get a chance over the next week. But until then, don’t forget that I’ll be counting down that top 10 albums list tonight on The Playlist with The Reverend on 90.3 The Core!
As we get into the slow time of year for new records, it gets harder to do a show of all new music. Last night will probably be the last show for a few weeks that doesn’t feel aged…at least relative to what I try to put together. Last night was great though, definitely a good feel to the show. I felt completely on with my mic breaks and the music I was playing. There were also a few callers and requests (that I couldn’t honor).
I’m always conflicted about playing reissues on the show. It’s not technically new music, but it is kind of a new release in a way. When it’s a band that I really like or that was really important to the music scene, I tend to side with playing it. So being able to throw some Sunny Day Real Estate on was nice…even though the reissue came out about three months ago, it just finally made it into rotation at the station. That’s old for The Playlist, but I couldn’t resist playing something from it.
The new Spoon single is great! I’m seriously looking forward to the new album next year. For a while before Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, it felt like they had dropped off, but that album brought them back in a big way for me. It was one of my top albums of 2007 so I’m interested to see what they do now.
Next week will by my Top 10 of 2009 countdown show. I’ve got my list all decided and ready to go. I just need to pick out the songs that I want to play from each one.
Last night’s edition of the Playlist turned out really well. It was my first show back in our normal studio in the Livingston Student Center after six months in a temporary studio at Yorba Lounge. It felt nice to be back in there. There was definitely a lot more energy to last night’s show because of it. Maybe it was just excitement to be back or maybe it was something else. I don’t know.
I got a ton of calls, IMs, and requests last night which was awesome–maybe the source of all that energy? That’s where The Shins and the two Coconut Records tracks (though, I’d play two Coconut Records songs any day and be happy about it) came from. And it was awesome to finally have the new Cloak/Dagger album in the studio so I could play it, but I still haven’t gotten to listen to the whole thing yet. Besides that, I was also excited to play Hell by Tegan And Sara again. I like that song a lot! The rest of the album is hit or miss, there are a couple good songs, but Hell is awesome.
I saw this on the way to work today. Not only does the company name, Peeping Tom’s Window Cleaning, make me feel a little bit like they might not be professionals, but they slap it on that old ass minivan to really hammer home the perv-on-wheels vibe. There is absolutely no way that Tom is going to be cleaning your windows with his pants on. Good luck with that.
I couldn’t resist posting it to failblog.org. Please vote for it!
I wasn’t expecting too much from last night’s show, I missed last week and didn’t really feel like being there. When I started picking out my music, I felt like I was struggling to find enough to put a show together with. I pulled out barely enough albums to fill an hour and figured I was screwed. But somehow, everything really came together nicely. I’m not sure how it happened, but the music flowed amazingly from one song into the other and my mic breaks were right on target. It was a nice little surprise.
Look at this shirt from woot. It’s got everything! There’s really nothing left to ask for. I think it mat slightly edge out Threadless’s This Is How The World Will End shirt. Maybe.
Just as the name would have you believe, Fantastic Mr. Fox is indeed fantastic (could I have started off anymore cliché?) We don’t get too many stop-motion films anymore, which is a shame, but this one completely makes up for that. The visuals in this film are simply awesome. They’re quirky as hell and different from other stop-motion films, but provide a welcome addition to the movie rather than taking away from it. Definitely retro on purpose without being snobbish…if that makes sense at all. The dialog is very calm without a lot of tonal differentiation and the humor is very dry, but this is what makes the movie so great and also makes a perfect roll for George Clooney. And this film would not have worked at all any other way.
I actually never read the children’s book when I was a child–which now that I think about it, is a little weird–so I can’t really compare to that or speak for how it holds up to my childhood memories of the story, but there’s a lot to like here. Recommended.
When a band says that they’re going to do a tour for an album and play the whole thing, it’s something that can go either way. When the Pixies decided to do this for Doolittle, I was skeptical. Jimmy Eat World did an alright job with Clarity while Alkaline Trio played entirely too long after finishing up with Goddamnit. However, the Pixies did it right. Oh so very right.
The Pixies didn’t walk right out on stage and throw Debaser at us, they started off with an abridged version of the French film Un Chien Andalou–which Frank Black credits as being very influential to him–played on an LED backdrop netting-like screen that was also used all set long to play various videos behind them. They walked out at the end of the video and started with a couple of b-sides before getting into Doolittle, which was accompanied by a couple jokes from Kim between songs. When they were done with Doolittle, they followed up with two encores. The first was a couple more b-sides including a second version of “Wave Of Mutilation” (making for a double dose), but the second treated us to a few non-Doolittle tracks including “Where Is My Mind?” and “Gigantic.” It was everything I could have asked for.
Even though the band took an obnoxiously long time to come out for the second encore, they kept the set to a very reasonable length. The point of the tour was Doolittle and they kept it that way. That is something I can respect. They also chose to give us a much heavier dose of Joey’s guitar to strip some of the polish away from the songs. The end result was loud, raw, and awesome.
The setlist and a few pictures that I snapped from my phone are below and you can also check out reviews from BrooklynVegan and Deaf Left Ear.
Main set
Dancing The Manta Ray
Weird At My School
Bailey’s Walk
Manta Ray
Debaser
Tame
Wave of Mutilation
I Bleed
Here Comes Your Man
Dead
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Mr. Grieves
Crackity Jones
La La Love You
No. 13 Baby
There Goes My Gun
Hey
Silver
Gouge Away
Encore 1
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
Into the White
Encore 2
Isla De Encanta
some of Vamos
Nimrod’s Son
Where is My Mind?
Gigantic
Yet again, a CGI movie has proven just how much of a little kid I am. It doesn’t quite touch anything by Pixar or Dreamworks, but Planet 51 is still awesome. While there is plenty of adult humor to go around, Planet 51 is definitely geared more to kid audiences than to the entire general public like Pixar and Dreamworks tend to be.
The movie was fun and witty enough with a ton of pop culture references for all ages, but my favorite part of Planet 51 is the concept of a human being the scary alien on another planet. It’s a fun idea and a neat twist on a classic idea…even if it is executed in the most cliché and expected of ways. Almost like E.T. in reverse. As for the animation itself, it was good, but not great. I loved the visual design, but Ilion Animation Studios is light years away from what Pixar achieves in the level of detail. I’m not the kind of person that needs all the snazzy effects and whatnot, but that’s kind of the added bonus you get from Pixar and Dreamworks.
As much fun as I had with this movie, I wouldn’t say that it’s a must see, but if you’re looking for something to see, check it out and don’t worry about the crappy rating.
I felt a little off my game for last night’s radio show, but I think it came together alright even though there were a couple wrong button presses. I got to play The Lawrence Arms again and I was able to play a song by The Drums for my co-worker who as been talking about them nonstop for the past couple of weeks. I want to find some time to spend with the Castanets and Kitty, Daisy, And Lewis records though. The songs that I played were awesome, but I haven’t had time to listen to the rest yet.
Mission Of Burma
Blunder
The Sound The Speed The Light
Pastels/Tenniscoats
Hikoki
Two Sunsets
Tim Williams
Stilts
Careful Love
Grates, The
The Biggest And Longest Adventure Ever
Teeth Lost, Hearts Won
World’s Greatest Ghosts
The Royal Court
No Magic
Drums, The
Submarine
Summertime! [EP]
Temper Trap, The
Sweet Disposition
Conditions
Happy Hollows, The
Silver
Spells
Kitty, Daisy, And Lewis
Polly Put The Kettle On
Kitty, Daisy, And Lewis
Frank Turner
Poetry Of The Deed
Poetry Of The Deed
Castanets
No Trouble
Texas Rose, Thaw And The Beasts
Hidden Cameras, The
Kingdom Come
Origin: Orphan
Mason Jennings
Tourist
Blood Of Man
Coconut Records
Bored To Death
Bored To Death [Single]
Lucky Pineapple
Moonlight Spiderbite
The Bubble Has Burst In Sky City
The Lawrence Arms
The Slowest Drink In The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City
I actually got this shirt a couple weeks ago from Tee Fury, but I’ve been kind of lazy about posting it. It’s a pretty decent one though. I also have another coming from Woot that may be one of the best zombie shirts ever. It really covers all your bases. I’ll make sure to post that one as soon as I get. But besides these two, I’m really trying to cut back my t-shirt buying. It’s not even totally a money thing as it is that I’m running out of places to store them and I’m on about a two to three month long rotation now.
I know it’s been a little while since my last update, but there hasn’t been too much to write about. I didn’t do my radio show last week and the only movie I’ve watched is How To Lose Friends And Alienate People with Simon Pegg–the only real reason I had interest in it. I have literally nothing to say about it except for how overrated Megan Fox is. The movie wasn’t great and it wasn’t bad. It just was. I also started writing a short entry about a pink urinal that I used last week and how the urinal is one of the manliest objects to exist since by definition is for men only and woman physically can’t use it properly. But then I got lazy and didn’t really finish it.
Oh well, I’m doing my show tonight, so I’ll post the playlist tomorrow and, this weekend, I’m going to try to see Men Who Stare At Goats, Planet 51, or Pirate Radio. I’ll post about whatever I get to see.
I was going to hold off on seeing Paranormal Activity until it came out on DVD, but I’ve been reading a few reviews about it saying that the only way to see it is on the big screen and not to even bother when it comes out on DVD. So I decided I’d go check it out. First off, I have to agree with that statement, you need to see this on the big screen. It just won’t be the same at home.
With so many other great documentary style horror movies (The Last Broadcast, Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Diary Of The Dead, etc) in the last tenish years, I wasn’t really sure that there was room for another, but there is. Ghost/haunting/whatever movies aren’t usually that interesting to me, but I liked this one a lot. It stayed interesting without getting too ridiculous. My only real complaint with it was the last couple seconds. I think they could have been left out for a better ending.
Overall, last night’s radio show didn’t really come together as well as I would have liked, but, at the least, I was able to play a lot of music that I was really excited to spin. New stuff from The Lawrence Arms–seriously Buttsweat and Tears is such a great 7″–, Cheap Girls, Flight Of The Conchords, Coconut Records, Frank Turner, and They Might Be Giants. Along with Monsters of Folk and some of the other stuff I’ve been playing over the past few weeks, there is a lot going on right now from some more well known, at least in the indie scene, bands. It’d be awesome if every week could be like this.
So musically, I really loved last night’s show and I think I had my mic breaks mostly where I wanted them, but I slipped up a bit on my segues between songs. I guess it happens. Oh well.
Flight Of The Conchords
Carol Brown
I Told You I Was Freaky
Coconut Records
Bored To Death
Bored To Death [Single]
Lucky Pineapple
Moment In An Empty Street
The Bubble Has Burst In Sky City
Sea Wolf
Turn The Dirt Over
White Water, White Bloom
Happy Hollows, The
Father Time
Spells
Cheap Girls
I Had A Motorcycle
My Roaring 20s
Swimmers, The
To The Bells
People Are Soft
Headlights
Telephones
Wildlife
Teenage Cool Kids
Reasons Why
Queer Salutations
The Lawrence Arms
The Slowest Drink At The Saddest Bar On The Snowiest Day In The Greatest City
Also, I wanted to post Frank Turner’s new video for Poetry of the Dead because he looks kind of like a cleaned up Brian Graber and I support that. Not the cleaned up part, but the Brian Graber part.
Here are a few new shirts I’ve picked up in the last couple of weeks. The first one, I got at the Threadless store in Chicago. You can’t really tell much in the picture, but it’s a guy on top of a car surrounded by zombies. I don’t even know how many zombie related shirts I have at this point. And the third one, I got at the Lawrence Arms 10th anniversary show.
I had another great show last night and I had a lot of fun doing it. Nice mix of music and a bit more diverse than usual. I’ve been saying that a lot recently, but it’s true!
I’ve been listening to the new albums by Frank Turner and World’s Greatest Ghosts a bit and I have to go ahead and recommend both of them. Frank Turner is becoming one of my favorite British acts and World’s Greatest Ghosts sounds a lot like a mix of The Paper Chase and Jukebox The Ghost. Check them out.
I wanted to get something up about the show sooner, but I haven’t had a chance. I’m going to completely ignore the openers and get to the point, The Lawrence Arms are one of the best bands playing right now. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long time for a punk band to play, but I’m going to be honest, I could have done a lot more. A LOT MORE. Hell, they could have played the set twice and I would have been giddy as hell about it.
The band came out on stage with a nice rockstarry entrance, but after that, it was clear that they were just three dudes having one of the best nights of their collective life. You could tell that they couldn’t take themselves too seriously if they tried. They tore through thirty songs with enough talking to break it up a bit and engage the audience, but never enough for you to want them to shut up. I’ve never seen a band get through that many songs that quickly. They were on a mission.
They played songs from all over their catalog, just like they promised they would. They kept things slightly more to the last couple records, but I’m not complaining about that. They played some stuff that they don’t play often, like A Wishful Puppeteer–they had only played this once before–and left out only a couple other songs I would have liked to hear. I’m starting to accept that I’ll never get to see them play Drunk Mouth Kitchen Smile.
They even had Neil sing a song. According to Brendan, Turnstiles is the best Lawrence Arms song “for your money” and I have to agree, in recent months, it has shot right up to the top of my list.
This was a fun set and seeing this band in Chicago was amazing. I love these guys. This was show number 1000 for them and I swear, the next 1000 better be made up of at least 1001 on the East Coast.
Here’s a list of the songs they played. It’s not in order, but you get the idea…
An Evening of Extraordinary Circumstance
The North Side of the L&L and Any Number of Crappy Apartments
Uptown Free Radio
Smokestacks
16 Hours
Turnstiles
Light Breathing
106 South
Nebraska
Quincentuple Your Money
100 Resolutions
Hey, What Time is “Pensacola: Wings of Gold” On, Anyway?
Your Gravest Words
Boatless Booze Cruise
Brickwall Views
Presenting: The Dancing Machine
Necrotism: Decanting the Insalubrious
Intransit
Raw and Searing Flesh
On With The Show
Alert The Audience
Chapter 13: The Hero Appears
The Ramblin’ Boys of Pleasure
A Wishful Puppeteer
The Disaster March
Cut it Up
Great Lakes/Great Escapes
Recovering the Opposable Thumb
Are You There, Margaret? It’s Me, God
Lose Your Illusion 1
Like a Record Player
PS: Chicago really is the best city ever. Every time I go there, I love it more and more. Friendly people, amazing food, awesome vibe, tons of great music.
I went to see The Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones in Philly last night at the Trocadero. It was an all around great show.
The Loved Ones played what was probably the best set I’ve ever seen them play. I can’t really describe why it was so great, but they just felt really on and didn’t talk too much compared to other times that I’ve seen them. Their set list was well chosen and leaning way more to the Keep Your Heart side of things than Build & Burn, which works out great for me since I think Keep Your Heart is a much better record.
Murder By Death was slightly worse than the last time I saw them, but that was also about five years ago. They played well and sounded good, but I think I miss them being a five piece. Having a dedicated keyboardist made them able to keep more of their recorded sound when playing live. Sarah did a great job switching between cello and keyboards, but it wasn’t quite the same. The last time I saw them was before their last two albums came out so they had fewer songs to play. This gave them time to rock out and jam a little more. I’m not into jam bands, but I love when bands that I like just jam out for a little bit during some of the instrumental parts of songs. It adds something extra to the live set that you don’t get from a record. This is something that they seemed to do a lot in the past and it was one of my favorite things about seeing them, but now with all the extra songs that they have, there is a lot less time to do it. Still, they sounded great and picked a good selection of songs to play. I think they covered everything that I wanted to hear.
And then there was Gaslight Anthem. They sounded amazing and were tight as hell with a great stage presence. It may have been the tightest that I’ve ever seen them play out of the six or seven times that I’ve seen them. But the selection of songs that they played was a bit disappointing. The ‘59 Sound is a really great record, one of the best to come out in 2008. However, it lost a lot over the last year for me. Most of my interest in it waned. Sink Or Swim has stuck with me though. That’s what I wanted to hear. I didn’t expect a lot, but the entire first half of their set was from The ‘59 Sound. By the end, we only got a couple Sink Or Swim songs in total. I guess normally it would be expected to hear only a few songs from a band’s first album…if they have more than two, but with only two of them, it’d be nice it at least a third of the set was from the first album. Oh well. At least everything they played sounded great.
Even accepting the fact that I’ll never get to hear them play much from Sink Or Swim again, I don’t know that I’ll ever want to see them live again. I’m not sure how to describe it, but they felt very rock starry last night. It was a little too much. They stopped feeling like this band from New Brunswick that used to play basement shows and the Court Tavern to small crowds and more like a band that has their eyes set on stages set in front of thousands and thousands of people. It wasn’t to the point where it was terribly upsetting and bothersome and a lot of it was subtle, but it was enough that I feel as though my love for them will start to decline if I keep on seeing them.
Last night was also the first time that I’ve been to the Troc in about seven years. I’ve generally avoided it as I was never a fan of the place and I was reminded 100% of this last night. The sound is terrible. It might be the worst sounding venue I’ve ever been to. Ugh.
Last night was another fantastic show. Almost perfect all around. Great music, great segues, and the phone was ringing off the hook. Not even just the phone, but the instant messages too. So much so that it was almost stressful trying to keep up. I was actually sweating because of it.
I found out last night that our station streams perfectly fine over an iPhone just by going to www.thecore.fm and clicking to listen. I’m assuming this will work on any other smartphone too, I guess I never thought about it before.
Apparently, we’re supposed to get a Nor’easter this weekend so that’s going to put a damper on my Field of Terror plans, but I’m still excited to see Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones on Sunday in Philly. And it seems that there are still tickets for the Monday night show as well. You may want to check that out. Either way, expect a full report next week.
Last night’s show got off to a bit of a late start, but I still managed to fit in most of what I wanted. Other than that, it was was a relatively average show. Nothing of note to mention.
I think everyone liked Whip It more than I did. I mean, I liked it a lot, but everyone that I’ve heard talk about it loved it. The movie was entertaining and I actually didn’t find Jimmy Fallon to be annoying which was unexpected, but there wasn’t really anything about it that grabbed me like I wanted it to. I feel like for a movie about roller derby with Ellen Page and all the other people that are in this, I want a little more.
Ellen Page is awesome and I love her, but I feel like sometimes that innocent little girl, deer in the headlights look she normally pulls off so well doesn’t always fit. In Whip It, it only felt appropriate about half the time. The look felt overused and Bliss (Ellen Page) seemed like she was more confident than her face was showing in a lot of scenes. I don’t think the problem was Ellen Page so much as it was Drew Barrymore’s directing. Okay fine, I just don’t want to fault Ellen Page. Deal with it.
I don’t know, I really don’t have much else to say about this one.
Rating: B
PS: Andrew Wilson should change his name to Beef Surpreme in real life because that’s all I see when I see him.
You know, if you had asked me a year ago, before I had even heard of Zombieland, if I would have said “yeah, I think Woody Harrelson could wreck some zombies.” Now, ask me this after seeing Zombieland and the answer becomes something more along the line of “why the hell isn’t Woody Harrelson in every zombie movie?” Seriously, it’s a no-brainer. Dude knows how to kill some zombies.
Zombieland is one of those movies where you get so hyped up for and so obsessed with it before seeing it that the day before it comes out, you start to worry that it can’t live up to your expectations. Don’t worry. You will not be disappointed. Zombieland does everything right. It really does. Zombieland actually delivered more than I could have hoped for.
The obvious thing to do here would be to draw comparisons to Shaun Of The Dead. And while that’s not the most inaccurate statement ever, Zombieland isn’t just a U.S. version of Shaun Of The Dead. While both are more romantic comedy than zombie-focused, Zombieland stands on its own without needing a comparison.
Zombieland gives us a lot of great zombie kills, but keeps it light on the flesh eating. In fact, there are actually very few human kills to be seen in the movie. The ones we get are excellent, but like I said, the movie doesn’t focus as much on the zombies, it sticks with good old-fashioned romantic-comedy. This keeps the gore down a bit, but it’s not missed either. It just goes to show, that you don’t need gore for a good zombie flick…and you also don’t need to actually kill any of the characters either.
Bill Murray’s cameo was absolutely wonderful and Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin were all wonderful too, but the start of Zombieland is Woody Harrelson. This dude was born for this role.
I was going to hold off on seeing Paranormal Activity until it came out on DVD, but I’ve been reading a few reviews about it saying that the only way to see it is on the big screen and not to even bother when it comes out on DVD. So I decided I’d go check it out. First off, I have to agree with that statement, you need to see this on the big screen. It just won’t be the same at home.
I wanted to get something up about the show sooner, but I haven’t had a chance. I’m going to completely ignore the openers and get to the point, The Lawrence Arms are one of the best bands playing right now. An hour and forty-five minutes was a long time for a punk band to play, but I’m going to be honest, I could have done a lot more. A LOT MORE. Hell, they could have played the set twice and I would have been giddy as hell about it.
I went to see The Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, and The Loved Ones in Philly last night at the Trocadero. It was an all around great show.
I think everyone liked Whip It more than I did. I mean, I liked it a lot, but everyone that I’ve heard talk about it loved it. The movie was entertaining and I actually didn’t find Jimmy Fallon to be annoying which was unexpected, but there wasn’t really anything about it that grabbed me like I wanted it to. I feel like for a movie about roller derby with Ellen Page and all the other people that are in this, I want a little more.
You know, if you had asked me a year ago, before I had even heard of Zombieland, if I would have said “yeah, I think Woody Harrelson could wreck some zombies.” Now, ask me this after seeing Zombieland and the answer becomes something more along the line of “why the hell isn’t Woody Harrelson in every zombie movie?” Seriously, it’s a no-brainer. Dude knows how to kill some zombies.
