I’ve been either too busy or not inspired enough to post anything of substance over the last couple of weeks, but my media consumption has continued unabated.  So here’s a summary of some of what I’ve been experiencing:

Fang Island (Self-titled album).  I downloaded this off of itunes after Zach and I saw this Brooklyn-based happy metal machine open for Red Sparowes in Sacramento a couple of months back.  There’s something both heartwarming and ludicrous about this quintet, which aptly describes their music as “the sound of everybody high-fiving each other.” While Fang Island on record is good, they are even more of a beer-swilling, head-banging, vocal-harmonizing guitar-soloing juggernaut live.  Like Styx for hipsters…in a good way.  Fang Island provided a welcome palate cleanser at the Red Sparowes show by essentially bursting the bubble of avant metal humorlessness.  Also, the whole band is originally from Rhode Island and one of the guys in the band used to work at this great video rental place in Providence.

Battlestar Gallactica (the first three or so seasons of the series).  Holy Lords of Kobol is Battlestar Gallactica good!  Sci-fi of the highbrow/refracted mirror kind, and amazingly great considering the poor quality of its source material.  Plus, Edward James Olmos literally captains the ship as Commander Bill Adama, who is about as stoic as they come, but isn’t above punching his son in the gut while sparring in the gym.  BSG has all of The Next Generation’s high seriousness without its sometimes cloying moral clarity, and tackles a series of topical issues including torture, electoral politics, civilian command of the military, and journalistic ethics.  And the character development is great.

Inception. Roaring Shark West Coast saw Chris Nolan’s latest exercise in self-serious conceptual weirdness a couple of nights ago.  I had heard some devastatingly bad reviews of this movie, so I went in with low expectations, and was consequently pleased.  The plot is ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining, though it annoyingly manages to recycle a whole lot of Freud, whose theories on identity projection, the subconsciousness, totems, etc. are ransacked for the purpose of making art (or artiness).  The sets are predictably elegant and the cinematography clean, though my favorite part of the movie involves what can only be described as Nolan getting his way with a big budget and inserting a protracted ski and snowmobile-based battle in an alpine forest.  This is probably the closest I’ve ever seen Nolan get to goofy humor.  Nolan brings out his repertory company for this one – Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and, oh yeah, Michael Caine show up for the dreamy madness.

Rob, Kelley, Chu, and I all got together for a sweet Chengdu-style barbecue (authentically pictured above) in Sacramento’s Tahoe Park (just down the street from where I’m living right now). There was a little BBQ place across the street from the place I worked last summer that had all sorts of stuff on a stick that you buy and they grill for you in a really spicy sauce. For whatever reason I’ve been missing Jiading a little recently, so I was super pumped to try and recreate it in Sacramento. All in all it was decent, I thought. Chu ripped it up with some chicken, lamb, tofu, vegetables, and pineapple. I had an assist with some mango guacamole and lighting the charcoal. I think we made a boner covering part of the grill with foil (to protect the vegetables from sticking/falling into the fire). I think the foil ended up reflecting a lot of the heat so it took forever for the vegetables to get appropriately charred. Live and learn.

Also in that category, a pall was cast over the entire affair by two jerk park patrol guys citing Rob for drinking in a city park. Not only does Rob now have a criminal record, but he also has to pay a ridiculously heavy fine. All of which happened about 30 seconds after our arrival at the park. Apparently I’ve been Rob’s Typhoid Mary recently, since he also got a speeding ticket after dropping Chu and I off a few weeks ago. Sorry, Rob!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway I hope you guys are having a sweet 4th and everything.

Miniblog

• Dual Transform – A pretty cool text adventure if you’re into that.
• Stoked that Avatar: The Last Airbender is a total critical failure. I know it sucks for Shyamalan but he made his bed. I feel worse for the Delgo people. Plus there’s this.
• For some reason I watched the Rent movie because it was on TV. Found it 100% disgusting. I think out of all of the characters the only people I didn’t think were horrible, terrible people were Taye Diggs (the villain) and a smokin’ hot Tracie Thoms.

Tracy Thorn – “Why Does the Wind?”

The latest round of bands gigging at Sacramento’s Fire Escape and Boardwalk may not live up to the lofty example of Blownload, Sexrat, or the Snot Cocks as far as hilariously bad band names, but June does offer some decent pickings. Enjoy:

Friday, June 11 @ The Fire Escape

“Summer Showdown 2″ (night 1)

Fallrise

Zuhg

Dogfood (that sounds about right)

Exhale

Saturday, June 12 @ The Fire Escape

“Summer Showdown 2″ (night 2)

Splitself

March into Paris

Allinaday

Flatline

(I’m hoping for a Fallrise-Splitself final round.  Maybe they’ll form a Voltron-like super band called Fallrisesplitself.  Also, a band called Coldcokt is playing at the ‘Scape on 6/25.)

Saturday, June 12 @ The Boardwalk

Conducting From the Grave

The Antioch Synopsis (sounds like a terrible Tom Clancy-esque thriller)

Journal

Aurelia

Beyond all Ends

Lifeforms

My Murderous Intentions

Karakas (because the city of Caracas, Venezuela sounds badass when misspelled!)

(By the way, how long did this show run?  Two days?  Could it still be going on?)

Here’s a hilariously staged photograph from May 15th in Calaveras, when Kelley and I got married.  Zach and Chu were there, and the wedding photographer couldn’t resist capturing Zach and I affirming the eternal bonds of male friendship.  It looks like we got this taken at Walmart, and that the 100% real woods behind us are a backdrop.

Zach – there are also some good, non-handshaking photos of you, and of you and Chu.

Congratulations to Rob and Kelley who tied the knot yesterday at Calaveras Big Trees park. It was a great ceremony and Chu and I felt honored to attend. I had this whole big toast planned but in the moment I got really nervous and blanked on everything but the Chinese part. Rob’s wedding photographer got a great picture of me making the toast. I look like Gollum or something.

Anyway in retrospect it’s probably better I kept it short and sweet. The story I was going to relate was Rob coming home from Venezuela in the summer before 6th grade, and his first phone call to me went basically like this:

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Last night Rob and I went out to the Blue Lamp Lounge (Sacramento’s Bug Jar, site of the infamously poorly attended Tristeza concert) to see progressive metal band Red Sparowes. After a quick stop at Midtown Taqueria for some carnitas and al pastor, we headed over to the show. To be honest I was expecting another 5-6 person turnout, but surprisingly there was a line when we arrived and the place was decently crowded. The first band got going with a minimum of fuss and played a solid set of completely uninspired instrumental metal. They worked without microphones so during the one time they deigned to address the audience and say who they were, all we heard was “…..from San Francisco….” I mean they were basically playing the kind of music Rob and I had paid to hear, so I’m not going to knock them too hard but they were copycatting so hard it was tough to understand why they might expect anyone to go out and pick up their music as opposed to any other band’s. Finally, the bassist kept doing this one “move,” I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, where instead of just nodding his head to the beat or whatever, he’s got to do this like deep bow every time he plays a note. Understandable if you’re bringing the house down with your thundering guitars – but in this context let me just say it came off forced.

Next up were party-band Fang Island. I’d never heard of them prior to the show, so at first Rob and I were thinking they must be some local yokels who got themselves onto the Red Sparowes bill. This was bolstered by the fact that not only did at least 50% of the audience seem to be there for Fang Island, but Rob was convinced that he had seen at least one of the band members around town. Later on we found out that they were Brooklyn-based, and that Rob had actually seen them “around town” when they were students at RISD in Providence. Their most recent album got an impressive 8.3 on Pitchfork. At the show both Rob and I had some trouble telling if they were really amazing or really not amazing. A lot of energy, 3 guitars, and 4 guys singing these really simple and catchy harmonies. Definitely not who you would expect to be opening for Red Sparowes, really not even in the same genre. The Pitchfork review mentions Andrew WK and I think that’s about as good a touchstone as any. Their self-description of their sound is “everyone high-fiving everyone.” Very anthemic, kind of meathead rocking. Listening to their stuff on myspace in the light of day, I can’t say I’m overwhelmed, but some key cuts are “Daisy” and “Curaga.”

Finally Red Sparowes took the stage and for better or worse were exactly as you might expect. Note-perfect renditions of songs from the albums backed with the digital equivalent of a laser light show, having abstract movies that vaguely connected with each songs’ pathos playing behind the band. Not a word was spoken by the band, the transitions between one song and the next being accomplished by a change in the accompanying video. And you knew the set was over when on the last note of the last song the display went back to showing the “Red Sparowes desktop wallpaper.” Overall I really like the Red Sparowes sound – to me they’re a more polished or restrained Pelican, and I like that each of their albums are very high-concept. I think they could do with some more soloing and the addition of vocals but you could almost levy that complaint against the genre across the board (with Isis being a notable exception since they sing and as Rob has pointed out, they’re basically all soloing at once all the time). Some choice tracks are “The Soundless Dawn Came Alive As Cities Began to Mark the Horizon,” “Like The Howling Glory Of The Darkest Winds, This Voice Was Thunderous And The Words Holy, Tangling Their Way Around Our Hearts And Clutching Our Innocent Awe,” and “In Every Mind.”

Roaringshark West Coast had an outing to San Francisco last night to check out a Japandroids concert. The night got off to a rather inauspicious start as Rob and I got told off by a woman in Davis for walking in the middle of a road closed to vehicle traffic. Then we got honked at for trying to enter a line at the toll plaza, then we got chided at the club itself for “blocking the sidewalk.” Anyway, after the harrowing trip down, we managed to score some decent burgers and talk about Chris Nolan Batman (rob for zach against) and get to the club just as opening act Pepper Rabbit were starting their set.

The music was pretty consistent in quality in my opinion. I’m sure Mark would have felt bitter and uncomfortable during the whole indiestravaganza but I dug it. Pepper Rabbit started things off as a very solid opening act. Nothing I would go out and buy – and it seemed like every song required a new trick from the instrument repetoire (time for the clarinet, now time for the mini-guitar, now time for the…) – but overall surprisingly decent for an opening act. I’m not sure who I’d compare them to, maybe wannabe Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes. Key songs are “Harvest Moon” and “Snowalker.” BTW, check out their Myspace pic, totally biting off the whole MGMT urban mystic thing.

Next up was Avi Buffalo. Rob and I were of split opinion about them. I was up and down on them, while Rob was mostly down. The cool thing about them is that they were really straightforward and even had some solos. The guy had a super high voice, though, which was a kind of love-it-or-hate-it thing. Rob thought they were a little too precious, but on the plus side they had a bangin’ girl drummer. Key songs are “Jessica” and “What’s In it For?”

Japandroids finished things up delivering a pretty frenetic set. Melt Banana levels of energy, mixed with these chugging guitar lines and punky vocals. Live they reminded me of like…Melt Banana + the Ramones + Atom and his Package (a favorite of Jun’s, if any of you recall). From what I can tell from listening to their myspace after the fact, their live sets are sped up about 50% from the album material, but that could just be me being kind of snowed by how fast-paced the guys were on stage. Key songs are “The Boys are Leaving Town” and “Darkness on the Edge of Gastown.”