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.

i’m back. it was a pretty uneventful con other than hanging out with friends which was cool, and all the good/bad/funny stuff are things i can’t talk about publicly because they involve people in the industry, hehheh. the coolest thing was that one day when i was at the Oni Press booth, Alia Shawkat from Arrested Development came by and got Wet Moon 5 and a print. she is way more freckly in person. more later.

I’M GOING TO SAN DIEGO on Wednesday!!!!!!! ARGH. i wish i could stay home but i gotta go. there hasn’t been much Shadoweyes shit for Shadoweyes Month at roaringshark, but maybe i’ll have something to write about post-convention. i’ll write a post regardless, i guess, hopefully something interesting will happen.

Mini-blog: Don’t mean to bump Rob’s world cup post but I’ve been wanting to post some reviews. Especially to keep the front page updated for the month of shadoweyes. I’ve got a lot of stuff I can talk about and hopefully this week I’m more productive than last week which had pretty much floored me.

I’ve been in contact with Leonard recently and he’s been turning me onto some new music. I’ve especially been digging this video. Which is as fun to shred to than bon jovi.

Shinichi Osawa, Our Song

It’s very glamour which is not something I’m sure I know how I feel about. Hopefully I can get around to reviewing some albums.

It Might Get Loud: Imagine you’re back in high school, sitting in the cafeteria at lunchtime. The vice principal announces over the intercom 3 new initiatives to raise school spirit and fight student apathy: 1) additional study hall period on day of your choosing (with you so far) 2) hourly stretch breaks (uh…) 3) hip new school colors fuschia, orange peel, and slate (facepalm).

This is basically how I respond to the guitarists chosen to participate in It Might Get Loud. A brief summary: a documentary chronicling a meeting-of-the-minds of three famous guitar players, Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. Biographical segments and interviews with each subject are edited together with a jam session (if you can call it that) with all three present. In a certain sense, the film is exactly what you’d expect knowing that it’s made by the people behind An Inconvenient Truth–a browbeating, pious look at rock music viewed with the cloudy prism of boomer nostalgia. Dumb all around, the Jack White segments are particularly heinous. Not only does he dress up like he thinks he’s still in Cold Mountain but his entire demeanor and everything he says comes off as cover-up-your-eyes embarrassingly contrived. And he’s so full of himself over ideas that have been exhaustively explored in the pages Rolling Stones and other cultural monoliths. Seriously, you’re authentic because you like roots music?

This is not a movie for people who are into guitar. While I can understand deference given to someone like Jimmy Page, none of the three are really shredders. They are primarily known for their songwriting I would say as opposed to their technique. And that’s fine. The only reason I even bring it up is that the jam sessions, which should be the saving grace, are just completely boring. My point being that, even if technically accomplished metal and shred guitarists like Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen aren’t celebrated by the middlebrow hippies for which the director is aiming, you could at least sit them down in a room with their instruments and expect to hear something interesting.

Just a quick report on the World Cup final, which I watched from the noisy, beery interior of Sacramento’s Tapa the World. Despite the fact that basically no “hispanoparlantes” were in attendance, except for one or two Mexican guys from the kitchen, the mostly Anglo crowd was solidly behind Spain.  I found the one free stool at the bar and planted myself there, next to some restaurant guy who was off duty and who was drinking rather heavily (though not a vino tinto, as he should have been).  Interesting, bartenders and waiters alike at Tapa the World were treating Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout – also known as the greatest beer ever brewed – as if it were liquor (which it kind of is, at 9% alcohol content), drinking little mini-glasses at regular intervals.  I was just impressed that Old Rasputin was on tap!  I had a very nice cheese plate featuring a satisfyingly hard and salty Roncal and some bread and olives.  It would have gone nicely with a glass of rioja.  

The game itself was interesting, though not what I expected.  Both teams seemed nervous early on, and Spain was not nearly as in command of the ball as they were in their semi-final match against Germany (surprisingly, match statistics claim Spain had ball possession for 57% of the game).  Both sides missed some fairly good opportunities and fouled each other with a vengeance.  There was little in the way of pretty football a la Spain x Germany, but the match was generally exciting to watch.  Spanish stars David Villa and Sergio Ramos failed to score, and about the flashiest thing on the field were the hazmat orange uniforms of the Dutch side.  Spanish goalkeeper Arturo Casillas made some nice saves, and at the end of regulation time, the match was still scoreless.  Eventually, in the second period of overtime, Andrés Iniesta scored for Spain and it was basically over after that.  A couple of minutes later, Tapa the World erupted into a loud cheer – I think people wanted to sing Spain’s fight song, but no one knew what it was.  There were a few stray “olés!”  I had seen what I had come to see, and happy to see Spain win their first World Cup final, I left and headed home.

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?”

As you can tell, we’re celebrating Ross’s Shadoweyes for the month of July.

UPDATE: New logo by Ross!