Archive for 2002

Some links of interest:

I highly recommend Acoustica‘s MP3 mixing program. It’s certainly been one of the leadings factors as to why I haven’t been posting any new content here for the past several days. The program is extremely easy to use, and I’ve mostly been using it to create cd-long DJ-style mixes and ‘radio edit’ versions of long songs that occupy too much mix cd space. Example: “Karen Revisited” by Sonic Youth, which I’ve faded out around the 4 minute mark, excising a little over 7 minutes of instrumental noise at the end of the song proper. Don’t get me wrong – I love that bit of the song, but not at the expense of packing as many Sonic Youth songs onto a mix cd-r as I can.

Sequential Tart is probably no secret to the majority of people reading this blog, but I still want to give a big thumbs up to their monthly Bizarre Breasts column, which skewers poorly drawn female comic characters, mostly focusing on the Image Comics crowd. It’s an easy target, sure, but the quality is there. For real.

Henry Raddick fans should rejoice – The man himself breaks his silence in an interview with The Register. What does Mr. Raddick have to say to other 400 lb men with low self esteem? “Enjoy the battle,” says Raddick. “It’s you against the entire world.”

I have no idea who these people are, but they have me linked, they’re funny, and they are from NYC, so I return the favor. Welcome aboard, ‘Universal Donor’ and ‘Pussy Willow’.

People in the NYC area who are planning to see the free Clinic show tomorrow at Pier 54 should take note: The Village Voice is wrong, the show starts at 7 PM, and Clinic won’t be going on til around 9 PM. The Voice even lists the wrong number for the venue. The proper number for Hudson River Park is 212 791 2530, you can call them to double check if you like.

To be perfectly frank, all of the current alternatives to Audiogalaxy aren’t very good. I hate the way that Kazaa, Limewire, Morpheus, and QTrax function – I can think of nothing positive to say about any of those programs. Filetopia is alright, but has a fairly weak selection. SoulSeek is the best I’ve found thus far, but that’s probably just because it’s being overrun with Audiogalaxy refugees, and is building up AG’s shared library a bit better than the others.

I’ve been running the same tests on all of them. First, I check to see what comes up when I put in seaches for popular artists that I know very well – Pavement, Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, and The Neptunes. Invariably, the results are a fucking mess, there’s no rhyme or reason to the order of results. I hate that.

Second, I’ve been putting through searches for the more obscure interests that I have, and 90% of the time, there are no results. The databases on these services are of no help to me, not for the things that I most valued Audiogalaxy for.

Until someone makes something that functions in the clean, organized way that AG ran, or at very least the harddrives that made up that database are reunited, it looks like I’m limited to only downloading the very music that the RIAA set out to block me and people like me from accessing.

More about the RIAA and the demise of Audiogalaxy

I think the fundamental difference in opinion in this matter comes from how a person views music. If you view music as a commodity, as something that intrinsically involves dollar signs, then you take the RIAA’s side in this matter. If you think of music as being important cultural information, something from which knowledge is gained, then you will agree that having valuable online libraries of this shared information is in the best interests of the people. This isn’t even an argument against people selling records, or artists making money from their work. It is an argument in favor of libraries.

Only the hacks will stop making music if there’s no money in it, or more accurately, less money than they would have in the old distribution model. Thousands of people make music without making much (or any) money from it. A lack of compensation has NEVER stopped people before, and it won’t stop people in the future. File sharing does not hurt the overwhelming majority of musicians, and it can be debated whether or not Audiogalaxy et al have had all that much to do with the marginal decline in overall record sales. The industry seems to want to blame everyone but themselves, and meanwhile they are the ones who are constantly boosting cd prices which are already marked up far beyond their production costs in the midst of a recession. It’s not hard to figure out why people are buying less albums – as Videodrome says on Barbelith:

Oh, and by the way, Hilary [Rosen]? That whole slumping sales thing? You probably haven’t noticed, but the US is in a fucking RECESSION. That $18 Mudvayne disc at Sam Goody doesn’t look so good compared to food.

It is shameful that the RIAA is blaming the record industry’s steady loss of sales on the file sharing of a relative minority of people rather than on the fact that the industry is pricing records out of the hands of ordinary people. Even those who have a lot of money to burn will buy fewer records if the price is too high – it’s just simple logic! If records were priced reasonably (somewhere in the $6-11 range), sales would inevitably increase, and file sharing would be viewed no differently than the public libraries that they are.

The industry is trying to stop the future – a future in which information and culture can spread freely, a future in which people can potentially have access to music as easily as they have access to the contents of their public library – easier even, since they would not have to deal with waiting for what they want to access to be in stock. Ultimately, I side with the people in this matter – I strongly believe that people should have a right to access to information and culture regardless of their income.

The analogy of what the record industry is about to become – that is, the book business – in New York Magazine is accurate. People still buy books, and people will still buy records. People are conditioned in our culture to like owning objects. This isn’t going to change. There’s no sense in fighting file sharing, and the RIAA will be made to look foolish when future generations look back on what they tried to do. Hilary Rosen will look just like Joe McCarthy and Fredric Wertham…

Boycott the RIAA.

The RIAA have officially murdered Audiogalaxy. It’s a bit like having the major book publishers of the world get together to burn down public libraries, really. I hate living in a world where money is valued over knowledge, I really do.

The new Sleater-Kinney album One Beat has a very strange feeling to it, it’s a lot more harsh than the last three records, but they throw in these little pop touches to the songs that seem weird when they are contrasted with the more severe elements of the songs. Corin’s voice is back to being quite shrill after toning it down a bit on All Hands On The Bad One and The Hot Rock, which I think suits the songs pretty well, but I miss the naunces of songs like the ones on The Hot Rock. Most of the songs seem to claim “Combat Rock” as a genre description, many of them have this very martial sounding beat to them. It’s a bit like “Sleater-Kinney Goes To War”. I like it, but I don’t love it just yet.

You know what I do love?

Douglas Wolk’s Rules For Touring Bands.

I think Yo La Tengo’s The Sounds of the Sounds of Science might be one of the most relaxing records I’ve ever heard. The music was written and recorded to be a soundtrack for avant-garde deep sea documentaries by Jean Painleve, and sounds very appropriate for the subject matter. The recordings are very short on mid-range sounds, it’s all deep bass and high treble. I normally don’t get excited about music meant for soundtrack or background-music purposes, but every track on this record is involving and unique. I especially love “How Some Jellyfish Are Born” and “Hyas and Stenorhynchus”, which are quite soothing, particularly on this dark and muggy day.

Yo La Tengo will be playing a free show in Prospect Park at 9 pm on July 12th, by the way. It’s nice that so many bands that I like are playing for free in New York this summer…Clinic will be at Pier 54 on June 26th, Neko Case will be at Castle Clinton on August 1st, Sonic Youth will be in Central Park on August 11th, and Sleater-Kinney will be playing the Siren Festival, as noted in a previous entry.

I really enjoyed reading New X-Men #127. I think it’s Grant Morrison’s best issue so far.

There’s something so poetic and lovely about Xorn, in the way that he speaks and acts, and in the concept of what he is. I really like how it is explained that he does not see or hear the way that humans do, but senses and understands wavelengths and vibrations. I love thinking about what that must feel like, and how that could be quite liberating. I’m no science guy, but is my little brother correct when he says that Xorn perceives things in 6D? That’s so beautiful.

I like how good Xorn is, how he is unselfish, how only wishes to help others, that all he wants is peace. I like how he has trouble understanding why other people do not feel this way, and I like how Professor Xavier tries to explain it to him. There’s so many lovely quotable bits in this issue, many of them in the scene with Xavier and Xorn – a quiet discussion between two philosophical visionaries.

I think the artwork in this issue is perfect, and I don’t think anyone else who may have had the opportunity to draw the issue would have captured the feeling of the story as well. I like the way that Leon and Sienkiewicz render the scenes in Manhattan – they really do look and feel a lot like Chinatown – and the scenes with Xorn on the subway and in the tenement building just look so right. Leon has a lot of talent for drawing very natural body language, and articulating a feeling of quiet sadness in the drawings.

The basic plot with Xorn trying to save the “monster” child is sort of irrelevant, it’s obviously just there to give the story context and show Xorn doing something. This story is about letting the reader to get to know Xorn, and I think it did that wonderfully. I think that at least for the moment, Xorn is my favorite character in superhero fiction. He’s certainly the most refreshing one, anyway.

Oh, and my favorite line, among the tight competition:

…so I have tried to capture my feelings for you, in the form of symbols here on this book of paper leaves. But these lines and curves are not much like thoughts or feelings at all.

I also read the first issue of Morrison’s The Filth series yesterday. I think the new issue of New X-Men was a lot better. The differences are quite stark – the NXM comic was quiet and intimate, simplistic and character driven. It was all about thoughts and emotions. The Filth was more like The Invisibles, kind of cold and distant – it felt a bit like a put-on, something that was trying to get me excited or even shock me. It’s far too early for me to say much about this series, but I sure hope Grant makes at least one of the characters likeable, because I just can’t get into any of these characters.

Reading the issue, I got the feeling that it was like a bunch of leftover ideas for the Invisibles (or things Grant thought of afterwards and was upset that they came too late) just thrown together. The Filth certainly has that “here’s a big idea! here’s another one! here’s something sort of crazy! here’s some people acting sort of badass!” thing that the Invisibles had, but I’ve never really been into that much. I’d much rather have characters, thank you. Still, I’m being really unfair since this is only the first issue out of a series of thirteen. Or perhaps I’m being more fair to Grant than he deserves – if someone else wrote this, I’d be thinking “geez. another dystopian future. and the characters are a bit like the ones in The Matrix. oh brother, here we go again.”

I quite liked that a lot of the scenes played out without dialogue and intentionally moved slowly…I think Weston shows off a lot of his storytelling chops, and just from this issue I already have a greater appreciation of his talents.

Jack Fear has some interesting ideas about the first issue, and I think they improved my second reading of the issue, though I’m still not feeling it.

…and here I am watching the second half of The Hamptons tonight. I’m going to refrain from launching into a hateful diatribe about why the majority of people in this documentary depress and anger me so much…it’s just not worth the energy really. I’m sure it all goes without saying for anyone who would be reading this blog.

I will say this – I am very distressed by the fact that virtually every person who ends up in any sort of reality or documentary programming speaks almost entirely in junk English. It’s just a lot of very dull, inarticulate people trying hard to sound intelligent. It’s repulsive.

Well, I can try to cheer myself up by reminding myself that today I stumbled upon a whole concert worth of Malkmus/Jicks mp3s. It’s a reasonably nice sounding recording from mid-April in Buenos Aires. The show is notable mostly for containing several new unreleased works-in-progress songs; plus two Pavement songs (“Here” and “In The Mouth a Desert”) and several half-assed covers including R.E.M.’s “The One I Love”, Oasis’ “Champagne Supernova”, Radiohead’s “Creep” and “High & Dry”, Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy”, and The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil”. If you’re just going to go for two of the new songs; I say go for “Oyster (aka Crimson Alligator)” and the first untitled song in the set – the mellow keyboard-heavy number with the lovely chorus “oh Sherry, don’t you cry Mary”.

Other good news includes the fact that The 2nd Annual Siren Festival on Coney Island is right around the corner, and Sleater-Kinney and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs will be on the bill. I can’t say I’m too excited about seeing The Donnas or The Shins, though…

I am watching The Hamptons right now, and it is justifying every feeling of severe misanthropy I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

Mark E. Smith Vs. William Shakespeare

A preview of The Filth by Grant Morrison.

Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster have done it again – last night’s guest appearance by Tom’s “daddy” ranks among my favorite Best Show skits. Check it out here, starting just around the one hour mark. Memorial Day father-son boxing matches, rap-rock demos, “Tommy Doom – America’s Youngest Daredevil”, $100,000 worth of ice cream, “Tommy Nation”, and pro arm wrestling are just some of the topics of discussion for Tom and his sleazy dad.

“I agree with every word you said with the exception of the word ‘probably’.”

Last night’s setlist – I didn’t really do the set I had in mind, I focused on keeping people on the dancefloor, which I did pretty well. I had a solid dancefloor up til the end.

Peaches “Fuck The Pain Away”/ Le Tigre “Deceptacon (remix)”/ Michael Jackson “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”/ David Bowie “Rebel Rebel”/ The Rolling Stones “Let’s Spend The Night Together”/ The White Stripes “Hotel Yorba”/ Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now”/ Wham “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”/ Gloria Jones “Tainted Love”/ Big Ella “Too Hot Too Hold”/ Bobby Byrd “Hot Pants (I’m Coming)”/ Britney Spears “I’m A Slave 4 U”/ Rob Base “It Takes Two”/ Salt N Pepa “Push It”/ Snoop Dogg “Undacova Funk”/ Stevie Wonder “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”/ Spanky Wilson “The Sunshine of Your Love”/ The B-52’s “Love Shack”/ Aretha Franklin “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”/ Deee-Lite “Groove is in the Heart”/ Bjork “Big Time Sensuality”/ The Breeders “Cannonball”/ Dub Narcotic Sound System “Fuck Shit Up”/ Joan Jett “Cherry Bomb”/ The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”/ Elvis Presley “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”/ INXS “Need You Tonight”/ The Cure “Just Like Heaven”/ OMD “If You Leave”/ Madonna “Into The Groove”/ New Order “Bizarre Love Triangle”/ ESG “Dance”/ Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Got Your Money”/ Jay-Z “I Just Want To Love You (MTV Unplugged version)”/ Nelly “Hot In Here”/ Mystikal “Shake Ya Ass”/ Notorious BIG “Hypnotize”/ Blackstreet “No Diggity” Vs. Grandmaster Flash “The Message”/ Tom Tom Club “Genius of Love”/ Depeche Mode “I Just Can’t Get Enough”/ Michael Jackson “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”/ Prince “Kiss”/ Peaches “Lovertits”/ Taylor Savvy “Share The Dream”/ Crossover “Extensive Care”/ Martha and the Vendallas “(Love Is Like A) Heatwave”/ Chuck Edwards “Downtown Soulville”/ Barrett Strong “Money”/ The Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There”/ James Brown “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”/ Otis Redding “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”/ Eddie Bo “Check Your Bucket”/ Keith Mansfield “Young Scene”/ Eddie Holland “Leaving Here”/ The Meters “Cabbage Alley”/ Len Barry “1, 2, 3″/ Sleater-Kinney “You’re No Rock and Roll Fun”/ The Slits “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”/ Liquid Liquid “Cavern”/ Ian Dury “Spasticus Austisticus”/ Belle and Sebastian “Legal Man”.

I went on about 3 am, and ended around 6:30. There was another DJ who went on just before me, and played just shy on one hour. There were three bands on the bill – Log Jam, The Mosquitos, and The Brite Lites. I wasn’t too crazy by the latter two, but I really loved Log Jam. They were like some kind of cross between ESG, and Pavement at their sloppiest. They were very endearing – I was talking to two of the guys from the band afterwards, and they were telling me that this was their second performance, that they are just starting out – I hope they keep at it, cos they were catchy, groovey, funny, and very charismatic. The Mosquitos played fast, loud indie pop – they might have been more enjoyable if they weren’t so fast or loud, I didn’t really pick up on any of their melodies or lyrics, and I’ve got a feeling that they maybe weren’t so bad. The Brite Lites were more or less a noise punk band with my friend Chuck on bass. I couldn’t really get into them, and I don’t think all that many other people were either. I just wasn’t feeling it.

Though I have been out of school for about six months now, I formally graduated from Parsons/New School University today. The whole day was extremely dull, mostly waiting around with a lot of people with whom I am acquainted, but not enough to have any decent conversation. The ceremony was only a bit more entertaining.

New School president, former Nebraska Senator and Presidential hopeful Bob Kerrey presided and made it clear to everyone in the room why he stands no chance of actually securing a presidential nomination in 2004. This man makes Al Gore seem charming and charismatic by comparison – he was dry and bland, and reminded me a great deal of those guys who used to narrate those high school film strips in the 50s. His speech had very little to do with the commencement, it seemed more like he was addressing a board of trustees or something like that. Ugh. I can’t remember the name of the retired historian who spoke after him, but his address was equally inappropriate – rather than saying something ‘inspiring’ or whatever it is you’re supposed to say at college graduations, he gave a detailed justification for his career. That’s it. He explained why being a historian is a good thing. Thanks, professor. I hope that made you feel better.

The ceremony ended with a brief speech by James Lipton which made Will Ferrell’s impression of him on SNL seem a lot less pompous, verbose, and pretentious by contrast. What made Lipton’s speech even more unintentionally funny to me was that he was dressed up in this ornate green, black, and yellow ceremonial gown that he was obliged to wear due to some honor from a French academy. He looked like some kind of pimped-out Pope, I tell ya. I really do wish he had used one of his catchphrases at the end of his speech, but I was let down – I was hoping for a “You are a DELIGHT“. Oh well.

Do yrself a favor and don’t bother listening to the remixes of Reveal songs on R.E.M.‘s website. They all sound so cheesy that I feel as though I need to wash the lameness off of me after having listened to them. A lot of them sound like a cross between awful 80s music (think “Mr. Mister”) and post Roger Waters Pink Floyd, and there are some very weak stabs at French house, ‘quiet storm’ r&b, and diluted Everything But The Girl style electro-adult contemporary pop mixed in too. Yuck. The only thing worthwhile in the bunch is still not very good – Her Space Holiday’s remix of “Summer Turns To High” at least starts out interestingly before deteriorating into cheesiness. Someone needs to tap Michael Stipe on the shoulder and tell him the truth: his voice is a terrible match for electronic textures. His voice is perfectly suited for folk, bubblegum, or rock – isn’t that enough?

In bootleg news, Boom Selection put up a whole bunch of new mixes yesterday, the best of which is Eminem “Without Me” Vs. Stereolab “Miss Modular”. This track is beautifully mixed, perfectly matched, and utterly essential for bootleg fans. I’m surprised more people aren’t using Stereolab tracks for boot mixes, or just for samples in mainstream hip hop.

I put up the tracklisting for one of the mix cds I’m making to send out to some Barbelith folks on the Art of the Mix site. If you asked for one, and don’t want to have it spoiled, then you should obviously not click on that link. If you want one, please contact me via the guestbook to the left, and leave your email address so I can respond to you.

Mat Honan is building up a massive collection of Attack of the Clones reviews written on personal blogs to illustrate a point.

Thanks to Black Ops on WFMU, I’ve discovered The Polyphonic Spree’s The Beginning Stages Of…, which is currently making me very happy. They sound a lot like how I was imaging the next Flaming Lips LP would sound like, and since I’ve yet to hear any of Yoshimi vs. the Pink Robots yet, I might still be correct. It’s a lot like The Soft Bulletin in its lush over-the-top arrangements, its similar melodies, and its blend of cheery optimism and melancholy. To be more specific, it’s like an album long version of “The Gash” from that LP. It’s a very lovely record from start to finish, though the final track which is 30+ minutes of chopped up bits of the previous tracks is a bit too “Revolution #9” for me. I especially recommend “Section 7”, “Section 8”, and “Section 9” for those who want to get a little taste of the record. As implied by the titles (Sections 1-10), the record is meant to be one long piece of music with each song as a movement of the overall album composition. This is certainly one of my favorite records thus far in 2002, I’m looking foward to seeing them when they come to New York on tour.

NEWSFLASH I spoke too soon about the new Flaming Lips LP – I downloaded the record not long after writing the above post, and though it is much too early for me to formulate an opinion about it just yet, I can safely say that it’s BIZARRE. Most of it sounds like a soundtrack to a Japanese animated film, and it is very much a concept record about someone called Yoshimi fighting “those evil natured robots”, it rarely strays from the lyrical themes. It’s not as orchestral as The Soft Bulletin, but it’s lush in its own way. There is all manner of synthesizers, drum machines, and electro sound effects all over this record, but also a great deal of acoustic guitar strumming. A few of the songs have a breezy summertime feeling to them, but others are extremely melodramatic and bombastic. This is a very interesting record, to say the least. I was wrong to sell the Lips so short, anticipating a sequel to The Soft Bulletin instead of something else altogether.

I saw Sleater-Kinney last night. It was okay, I guess. I wasn’t feeling very well during the show, so it impaired my ability to enjoy myself too much. They played about 10-12 new songs from the upcoming One Beat LP, and I really liked most of them, they left a very good first impression on me. I’m not sure how to describe the new tunes other than that they all rock a lot harder than anything on the last two albums, Carrie sings more often than usual, and that I enjoyed them more than most of the oldies that were played. I wasn’t very satisfied with the predictable older selections, I’m getting frustrated with them always preferring to play the more obvious songs instead of the more complicated or subtle songs. For example, I’d rather hear “Burn Don’t Freeze” or “Ballad of a Ladyman” than “The End of You”, “Little Mouth”, or “Dig Me Out”, which all strike me as a bit stale by now. I wonder if it’s just because I’ve seen S-K a number of times, that if I hadn’t seen them before I wouldn’t care all that much about this. I did really enjoy “One More Hour”, “Little Babies”, “Rock N Roll Fun” and “Call The Doctor”, even though I’ve seen them before several times, so maybe it’s just that I’m picking favorites here.

Other than the new songs, this is the order that the older songs were played chronologically. They were broken up into bits between new songs, except the last four which were the encore. Call The Doctor/ One More Hour/ Start Together/ Turn It On/ You’re No Rock and Roll Fun/ The End of You/ Little Mouth/ Little Babies/ I Wanna Be Yr Joey Ramone/ Dig Me Out.

I’m really looking foward to the new LP now, there’s no question that it’s going to be great. But not as great as this or this. (Thanks Tom!)

I want to live in a world where people do not clap in movie theatres.

I just got back in from seeing Attack of the Clones – I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. In some ways, it was really fun, a good space adventure. I’m happy that things actually happened in this story, and that it was mostly true to all the things I really loved about the original trilogy as a little kid. Overall it’s pretty good, and is about as good as Return of the Jedi, but lacking in the emotion of Luke’s confrontation with his father, or any other emotion for that matter.

SPOILERS.

When I think of the flaws, my opinion of the film drops significantly.

The “romantic” scenes were poor, just absolutely horrid.

“I hate sand. It’s irritating. NOT LIKE YOU.”

(kissssssss)

What? I just feel bad for Natalie Portman, her character is so flat and dull, she has no choice but to act stiff and generally lack charisma entirely.

Was there any good reason for shoehorning Jar Jar Binks into the film, besides George Lucas’ stubborn refusal to admit that the entire planet hates that character with a deep burning passion? Well, everybody except for the guy a few rows ahead of me who kept chuckling at his lines. Something is wrong with that man.

I was very offended by the return of the Watto character, this time making the anti-semitism behind that character more blatantly obvious than the last time by giving him a scraggly little beard and a small black hat, making him appear to be a Hasidic Jew. WHAT THE FUCK? When you consider this sort of anti-semitism, is the scene with the stormtroopers at the end merely a direct visual reference to Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, or is it a loving homage? This really troubles me, especially since the horrible Asian stereotypes from The Phantom Menace are in this film too. These characters are superfluous – Lucas clearly is adding them in because he thinks they are funny, revealing his bigotry without shame.

I think that overall the clone/droids/Dooku plot was too confusing, I know that my poor mother was confused as hell afterwards as my brother and I attempted to explain what was going on. Basically, Dooku was acting as a double-agent, tricking the Trade Federation/Separatist folks into creating a crisis that Palpatine’s clone army could stop, after giving him dictatorship of the Republic. The scheme also seemed to deliberately force Anakin and Amidala together, and kill a whole bunch of Jedi. The story was clear moment to moment, I don’t think there were parts where the audience was thinking “huh? what?”; but as a whole, it seems like a big mess of events that seem important but have little resonance. This film is incredibly insular, it certainly is only trying to appeal to its core fanbase at the expense of reaching out to a wider audience. It suffers from the same problems that most mainstream comics have for the past twenty years, and it’s a shame.

I’m not sure what I think of Lucas deliberately recycling his own themes/motifs/iconology. There’s so much of it throughout the film, sometimes it seemed like a hermetic vacuum of self-reference. Most of the time it felt like the goal was to make the audience feel safe in its familiarity, either that or Lucas was just throwing his hands up in the air and saying “well, I’ve run out of new ideas! I’d better go back to the greatest hits!”. Being less cynical and giving Lucas the benefit of the doubt, I can imagine that it’s his attempt at making the series something like a palindrome of motifs and events, that it all adds to the consistency of the series.

I did like a lot of it too, but my misgivings about the film are what linger in my mind after having seen it. I enjoyed the scenes in the beginning with Anakin and Obi-Wan in pursuit of the bounty hunters on Coruscant, the subsequent duel between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett was a lot of fun and visually exciting as well. There were a lot of good action adventure bits, little fan-pleasing tidbits scattered throughout. That’s all cool with me. With the exception of some awkward looking alien characters, the film looked really beautiful. I know a lot of people really like the Yoda vs. Dooku duel, but I think it was very anticlimactic even if it was sorta neat to see the little guy jumping around Matrix-style. Whatever.

If I have to pick a side in the Attack Vs. Spidey debate, I’m definitely siding with Spider-Man. It’s so much more fun, clear, inspiring, and audience-friendly. Still, I think that Attack of the Clones is a pretty satisfying Star Wars movie. Outside the context of Star Wars, it’s not much at all.

My 14 year old brother’s theory: “If Attack of the Clones is really bad, they probably won’t make another one even if it makes a lot of money cos no one’s going to see Episode III if everybody hated the last two consecutive movies.”

So young, so naive.

I’m seeing Attack of the Clones with him tomorrow night. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it – my expectations are low, but every time I see an ad for it on tv, I get all “Oooh! Lightsabres! Robots! Spaceships!”, so hopefully the film will be enjoyable as far as that goes. I’m pre-disappointed, so I won’t be in denial about its quality as I was with The Phantom Menace after I saw it the first time.

I am very happy with how the Cassandra storyline ended in NXM 126. Perhaps part of why I’m not very interested in Attack of the Clones is because I know there’s no way it could possibly touch the pure geek excitement that came from anticipating the ending of that story, and my satisfaction in how Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely pulled it off. The ending turned out pretty close to how I imagined it would turn out, but the execution was something I just couldn’t map out in my mind in advance, which is rare for this sort of fiction. Normally I can predict the conclusion of sci-fi/superhero stories just from having read so many over the years.

Without saying too much and spoiling things for those who might not have read it yet, I do want to mention that the scene with Cassandra in the school room with Charles and Jean is one of my favorite scenes of all the visual fiction I’ve ever seen. Brilliantly conceived, perfectly illustrated.

Megachurches as Mini-Towns.

“People are longing for morals, values and ethics,” Dr. Kallestad said. “It’s not isolation. It’s insulation.”

In other news, I’m really interested in seeing how Tina Fey turns this New York Times Magazine article into a feature film – it sounds so promising, especially since her best comedic moments are those that fuse female issues with cruelty…

Thanks to folks like Chris and Rizla, I’ve been exposed to some very interesting new Brit punk bands, most notably Ikara Colt and McLusky

For all of the McLusky tunes I’ve heard, the one that stands out the most is “Whiteliberalonwhiteliberalaction”, which has got to be one of the most vicious punk songs I’ve heard in a long while. It gives off a strong, contagious feeling of bitter resentment and loathing, though I’m not certain exactly who their target is. I would think that they are going on about self-satisfied and arrogant white liberals and political correctness, the title and the sing-song mantra “cos everyone’s a hero” clue me in as much. The singer’s voice is amazing, I love the way this guy sneers, and when chorus is screamed, it is incoherant but communicates his frustration very well. The guitars in this song sound great too, they sound more like electronic shrieks and machine noises than guitars, always a plus. Nothing on McLusky’s newest record Does Dallas quite matches that song – I think it’s a better record than the one “Whiteliberalonwhiteliberalaction” is from, My Pain and Sadness Is More Sad and Painful, but only a few songs really grab me. “The World Loves Us And Is Our Bitch” and “Gareth Brown Says” are both mean, catchy, and funny, but most of the others are samey and aren’t all that interesting.

Ikara Colt’s “Sink Venice” seems to be all about incoherant desperation – I have no idea what the singer is on about, other that they seem very intent on having Venice sink. The song is overflowing with defiance as it speeds along on a bassline that sounds suspiciously like “Negative Creep” by Nirvana. The singer reminds me a lot of Mark E. Smith while sounding nothing like him – I think it’s just a similarity in attitude and lyrical style. The Ikara Colt record is a lot better than the two McLusky LPs I’ve heard – they are a lot more consistent, have a slightly wider range, and better songs overall. The record is called Chat and Business, and is like one long nervous twitch. “One Note” and “Video Clip Show” match “Sink Venice” for it’s speed, and urgency – they sound determined and impatient. The quiter songs share the same intensity though I think those songs (“May B 1 Day”, “City of Glass”) are a bit more typical of heavy indie rock bands.

In other news: it is official, Igor Kordey will not be drawing any NXM after his upcoming (groan) three issue storyline over the summer. Thank god Mark Powers was fired – Kordey was ruining everything.

Tomorrow night’s GBV show has been cancelled due to Bob Pollard getting a back injury over the weekend, which is bad for Bob and convenient for me. That show was going to throw off my schedule for the whole week, I’m glad to see it get pushed back a bit. I will be seeing Sleater-Kinney this Friday, which should be a lot of fun. I’m interested to hear what the new songs sound like, especially the one they’ve titled “Combat Rock”. Why would any punk band name a song after a Clash record? Weird.

Also: On opposite ends of the design spectrum, Andrew and Helen have new websites online.