Thursday, January 31, 2008

Best of 2007 - Stuff



OK, still can't make a movie list, but I'm going to talk about my favorite stuff from 2007 that wasn't music, film or DVD.

30 Rock - Got off to a rocky start last year, but geek heartthrob Tina Fey's show has evolved into the best damn sitcom since Arrested Development.

Americone Dream - Ben & Jerry's Stephen Colbert-themed flavor isn't as luxuriously gooey as Wavy Gravy (still my favorite), nor can it substitue for Prozac as well as New York Super Fudge Chunk. But it's somehow the most perfect capturing of the All-American Ice Cream Cone taste.

HBO - The final episodes of The Sopranos were just the tip of the iceberg. There's Big Love, which is just as great in its own way. And the hilarious Flight of the Conchords. And the ever-reliable Real Time With Bill Maher. And great documentaries like I Am an Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA and John Landis' Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. And I haven't even started watching The Wire yet (I have it in my Netflix)!

Buffy The Vampire Slayer "Season 8" - Yes, I'm a dork. I'm reading the Buffy comic. I'm excited to find out that Willow has a crush on Tina Fey. Just go ahead and take my lunch money.

Mango Lemonade from Trader Joe's - This is a great mixer. Add tequila, and you have something that tastes vaguely like a margarita. Add rum, and it's somewhere remotely in the neighborhood of a mai tai.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier - This is the geekiest thing ever. That is not hyperbole. LoEG is pretty close to TGTE in the first place, as it's basically a very complex piece of fanfic about 19th Century literary characters, but this takes it to a whole new level. There's a history of England written by a fictionalized Aleister Crowley that places Conan the Barbarian and Elric of Melnibone in the timeline. There's a story about Wooster and Jeeves encountering H.P. Lovecraft's Old Ones. There are perfect parodies of Shakespeare and Keuroack. And there's a 3-D section. Like I said, it is The Geekiest Thing Ever.
Penguin Martini Shaker and Tiki...er...Tobacco Dispenser - Every home should have one!
My Taco - I've been obsessively eating at this taco joint on York just east of Figueroa this year. The lamb tacos are amazing. But of course, leave it to Jonathan Gold to find the one thing I haven't tried there--the carne asada fries.
Oh yeah, and that Harry Potter book.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Zen Comedy, Tomorrow Night!


The Owls Are Not What They Seem


Good Ol' Diamond Dave

OK, so everyone's heard the isolated vocal track from "Runnin' With the Devil" that's been circulating, right? (Actually, I'd seen it last week, but just actually listened to it five minutes ago at the urging of my friend David.) It's the whistle at the end of the guitar solo that kills me. I mean, I'd heard it in the song, but I guess I always figured it was one of Eddie's crazy guitar effects. The idea of Dave in the recording booth laying down his vocal tracks, then pulling out this whistle and going "Vwheeeeeeeeeoooooouuuuuul" just cracks me up. (What do you call those things, anyway? I keep wanting to say "slide whistle" but that's not what it is.)

I was thinking about this song, and I remembered this incident from high school, when I was writing the funny stuff for the school newspaper, and I guess I had made some offhand comment about David Lee Roth, and this girl in class who was a huge Van Halen fan said "Why do you hate David Lee Roth?" Which I didn't, but he's pretty easy to make jokes about. I'm trying and failing to remember exactly what happened, but I guess I decided to do a letters-to-the-editor column, and I included her question. And one of the reasons I gave for hating DLR (which I don't) was "Because he wrote the line 'I got no love in Ko-rea' but he lives in L.A." Which of course, was pretty dumb, because years later I realized he actually said "I got no love you'd call re-al."

Anyway, as long as I'm posting stuff that's making the rounds, have you seen Racquel Welch's Space-Girl Dance?

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

This Must Be Where Pies Go When They Die

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

God vs. Gilliam, Round 4

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Status: Filming
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cast: Heath Ledger...


EDIT: The ineveitable announcement.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Zippidee Doo Dah


Photos from the Doo Dah Parade here.


Photos of the wild after party here.

I Just Know I'm Gonna Get Lost In Those Woods Again Tonight



Having Twin Peaks on DVD is a joy beyond expression.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Spittin' Wicked Randomness, Vol. XXIV

Beastie Boys Live 1983! Unknown hardcore song + cover of "Cum On Feel The Noize"!!!

In case you haven't heard, RIP Vampira.

And RIP Richard Knerr.

A VERY enthusiastic endorsement of Parkers Farms Peanut Butter.

The 10 Best Bookstores in the World. Seems to be based more on architecture and ambiance than on, ya know, books, but still pretty cool. Secret Headquarters Comics in Silverlake makes the list!?!

Girl 27 (David Stenn, 2007)

1937 was a big year at the box office for MGM. At the height of the depression, they had made huge profits. So the studio heads invited their national staff of salesmen out to Hollywood for a huge celebration.

Meanwhile, Patricia Douglas showed up for a cattle call audition to be a chorus girl in an MGM musical. 120 young starlets were selected, dressed in sexy cowgirl costumes, and driven out to a studio lot in what was, at the time, the middle of nowhere (between Hollywood and Culver City). When they arrived, they found no movie, but a lot full of horny, liquored-up, midwestern salesmen who had spent the last couple weeks daydreaming about the debauchery they were going to get into when they arrived in the big city. A studio head stood on stage, gave a speech congratulating the salesmen, and made a fairly obvious implication that the girls were there to provide them with pleasuer. You can probably guess where the story is going from there.

Patricia Douglas was brutally raped. At least one other girl was raped as well, but let's be real--there were probably a dozen rapes that night in the holding-a-screaming-girl-down sense, and probably dozens more who just realized they had little choice but to go along with it and hope for minimal bruises. When Douglas went public with her charges, MGM began publicly defaming her character, a strategy that worked even more reliably then than it does now.

Girl 27 is a fascinating documentary, almost despite the work of director David Stenn, who had uncovered Douglas' case while writing a book on (if I remember correctly) Jean Harlow. He wrote an article on the case for Vanity Fair, and spent years trying to get Douglas to talk to him. He seems to think the story of him getting her to talk is as interesting as her own story, and spends way too much time talking to the camera. He also makes the mistake of using Greta Van Sustern as a talking head, despite her having no information or insights to add. The story, of course, is strong enough to overcome these minor problems, but it's somewhat sad to think of the great documentary that a better director could have made from this material.

I have to admit, I feel a bit like an exploiter watching this. It's such a sleazy, noirish story set in Old Hollywood, with glamour and scandal and parellels to Betty Short. It could be a James Ellroy novel. It's all the things I would want in a film noir, but it's also someone's life, and a pretty horrifying one at that.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Killer of Sheep (Charles Barnett, 1977)



This movie is the best expression of The Blues that I've ever seen. Not the music, the emotion. You look at Henry Sanders' face, and you see a man just beaten down by life. In movies like Menace II Society, you see the ghetto portrayed as a warzone, where at any minute you could be killed by crossfire. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but Killer of Sheep gives you a much less sensationalist look at the hood. Obviously, I've never lived in a ghetto, and I have no experience to base this on, but this seems to me to be a more truthful take on what ghetto life is like: just a constant, wearying depression.

But, as with the blues, it's not all depressing. There are images of children at play on the streets, railroads and housing projects of Watts, and of adults grasping at whatever tiny bits of joy they can grab. It's a movie about the broad spectrum of inner city life, of human life.

Killer of Sheep was made as a student film while Barnett was at UCLA. It was finally restored and re-released last year, and is now available on a DVD with Barnett's 1984 feature My Brother's Wedding and a handfull of his short films. Warning: the film's title comes from the main character's job at a slaughterhouse, and there are some truly horrible images from that job in the film.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Best of 2007 - Music

This list isn't in order or anything, just the stuff I've really enjoyed this year. A lot of these are reissues, a couple of them involve friends of mine, so it's hard to know how to rank them.

Coconut Monkeyrocket - With Birds

My friend Jason has been making music under this name since some time around '91, but this is his first official CD release, and I have to say, he's outdone himself. CocoMoro sounds pretty much like the soundtrack to a Warner Bros. cartoon set to a funky hip hop beat, and it's as joyful a cacaphony as you'll ever hear. The programming on here is dense and intricate, but all you hear or feel listening to it is a happy good time. For fans of Spike Jones, Pee Wee Herman, Esquivel or Tex Avery, it's a must. You can hear some of the music at the Coconut Monkeyrocket website, and more of it at his myspace, but I think there's even better stuff on the CD (the incredibly dense "Juicy Jungle," and the cool and refreshing "Square Beer"). You can order the CD for $10 from the website, or from Amazon. It's also available on iTunes and eMusic.

CocoMoro also recorded a great version of Stereolab's "Moogie Wonderland" for the Stereolab tribute album The Politics of Photosynthesis, which is also available on iTunes.


V/A - Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, Vol. 1
V/A - The Roots of Chicha


This is the album I've probably listened to the most this year, and I'll probably continue to listen to it throughout this summer. It's 18 tracks of funk from Cuba, and as you'd expect, there are plenty of conga breakdowns and jazzy pianos and a healthy dose of wah-wah, but there's also some unexpected elements on almost every track, from the odd vocal harmonies on "Son of Propulsion" through the electronic synth bleeps on "Adeoay" to the Bollywood pastiche "Casina Y Epidecus." Pour up some mojitos, light up the grill and crank this sucker for your backyard party.

Roots of Chicha is a collection of 70's funk from Peru, with lots of psychedelic guitars and killer funk beats mixed in with Peruvian folkways. Not quite as cool as the Cuban stuff, but still pretty great.

Dirty Projectors - Rise Above


I've written most of what I had to say about this album already. Since then, I've gotten their previous album, The Getty Address, which is maybe even better. I don't even know how to describe this band, but any band who can write a lyric like "They wear their leaves like Warholian wigs" is pretty damn cool.


Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black


Sharon Jones' new album is, like her last two, a slammin' retro soul record full of electrifying performances (the tempo change in the title track alone is enough to justify the purchase price). The Dap-Kings do a great version of the Muscle Shoals Sound on 100 Days, after having loaned themselves to Amy Winehouse, with whom they produced an equally great version of the Motown Sound (there's some jazzy torchsongs and a rocksteady beat on Back to Black, but it all has the slick sheen of a Motown production). Being a huge fan of Stax and not that big a fan of Motown, you would logically expect me to prefer the Sharon Jones album, but I find Winehouse to be much more interesting. Yeah, her voice sounds a lot like Erykah Baduh and Lauryn Hill (and ultimately Billy Holiday), but her inflections are all her own. The personality we've gotten to know, for better or worse, over the last year comes through in her singing, which always seems a bit tipsy, unrefined, and unpredictable, prone to blurting out rude notes that seem a bit more blunt than they should have been. The slick musical tracks emphasize this further, creating the impression of a girl a little too drunk at a cocktail party a little too nice for her. And the songs are great. There are several ("Love is a Losing Game," "Back to Black" and my favorite, "Tears Dry On Their Own") that you'd swear are covers of songs you've heard a million times, until you listen to the lyrics: "What kind of buggery is this?" Having said that, the Sharon Jones album is a great party-starter, and everyone should run out and buy it now.


The Eat - It's Not the Eat, it's the Humidity
F - Four from '84 7"


Two reissues of punk rock from early 80's Florida. The Eat play bouncin'-off-the-wall pop-punk that's as catchy and high-energy as anything the Dickies or Buzzcocks ever cooked up. This release collects their insanely rare "Communist Radio"/"Catholic Love" 7" (which goes for upwards of $1,000 on ebay), the equally great God Punishes the East 7", the cassette-only release Scattered Wahoo Action, and all the songs from a late-80's studio session (some of which have never been released in any form), then throws in a second disc of live material. You can get it directly from Alternative Tentacles, or find it on Amazon, eMusic and maybe iTunes.


F play old-school in the general neighborhood of Dead Boys, Pagans, Weirdos or Crime, with a little bit of Alice Cooper and AC/DC influence thrown in. This is not the band that recorded You Are an EP, but the original band those guys spun off from, and it has more old-school sounding versions of some of the same great songs. You can buy it directly from my friend Bob at Sound Idea Distribution for some insanely cheap price.


M.I.A. - Kala


I didn't really pick out a favorite album this year, but this should be a strong contender. This insane house record built on samples of all sorts of international translates electronic globalism into a slammin' dancefloor record. What holds me back from giving it the crown is just my personal tastes. I can't quite warm to this sort of hard club techno, but I've been spinning it a lot in my car. And how could I not dig an album that kicks off by quoting "Roadrunner?"

Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass

He samples Snakefinger, writes an angry protest song about the demotion of Pluto, and somehow manages not to twist his tongue on his insanely complex rhymes. What's not to like?



Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops
Bucky Sinister - What Happens in Narnia Stays in Narnia



Two raw, unhinged comedy albums. I don't mean "raw" as in profanity. These two are just out on the edge. I'm sure most have heard of Patton, at least for being the voice of Remy in Ratatouille. I saw him do pretty much the same material that makes up this album (adding jazzy improvisations along the way), and he's just viciously funny. Bucky Sinister is even more out there, a shambling mess of a comic who sometimes gets into a slurry mumble you can barely understand, but there's some hilarious shit buried in there, particularly his rant about the frustrations of being an atheist in AA and his "found poetry" based on interviews with Courtney Love.



The Gossip - Standing in the Way of Control



I guess this is actually an '06 album, but I heard it in '07, so I'm counting it. Just a great collection of fun, well-written dance pop tunes. There's a little hype attached to this album about it being an exciting, new synthesis of punk and disco, but it doesn't really sound too different from, say, Pylon. That doesn't mean it ain't good, though.



Beastie Boys - Live in Poland, 6/30/07 and 7/1/07



The Mix-Up did eventually grow on me. There are a couple really great tunes on there, and it makes a great soundtrack for driving around L.A. But I liked these two concerts, which someone kindly posted, much more, especially the mostly-instrumental set from July 1. It's got a loose, mellow ound that shows the band at their very best. Get the 6/30 set here, and the 7/1 set here.



Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity



This is far from my favorite Deerhoof, but can you ever really count them out? The fact that it doesn't sound like anything they've done before is it's strength. These guys have no comfort zone. It's like they're inventing the wheel each time they sit down to write a song.

Betty Davis - (s/t)
Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different

Betty Davis is like a cartoon charicature of a Pam Grier character from a scifi movie. These two reissues from the 70's are filled with insane, over-the-top funk. Great stuff.

The Last 8 Songs on the Oxford American Southern Music Sampler 2007

To wit:
Thelonious Monk - "Trinkle, Trinkle"
David Banner - "Cadillacs on 22's"
Fred Neil - "A Little Bit of Rain"
Betty Harris - "Cry to Me"
Percy Mayfield - "HaHaHa in the Daytime"
Iris DeMent - "Sweet is the Melody"
Daniel Johnston - "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grievances"
The Roches - "Hammond Song"

Such a sweet, mellow mix. All these songs are great on their own, but together they just slay me. I've listened to this part of the mix so many times this year. The runner-up is the back-to-back combo of Van Dyke Parkes' chamber calypso "G-Man Hoover" and Zakary Thaks' proto-punk "Bad Girl." You can still purchase the annual Southern Music Issue, which comes with the awesome mix CD, from the Oxford American website.

JD and the Evils Dynamite Band - Explodes Across the Nation


I'm not sure if these guys are from Florida, but they have a song called "Everglades," and the photo on the cover looks like it could be from some backwards Flordia swamp town. Either way, it feels like Fla., all humid and funky. Not the best album of the year by any stretch, but a pretty nice set of funk jams along the lines of early 70's Miled Davis albums. Oh, speaking of...

Most Coveted Album:
Miles Davis - The Complete On The Corner Sessions


Generally, I don't care about studio outtakes, but since On the Corner is nothing but funk jams, it would be damn cool to hear the whole session. $100 is a bit much for me, though.



Hypothetical Single of the Year:
Dave Dee, Dozey, Beaky, Mick and Titch - "Hold Tight"

b/w The Coasters - "Down in Mexico"


Which is my way of saying that the Death Proof soundtrack kicks incredible ass. I thought "Hold Tight" was as great a song as you could find, until I heard "Down in Mexico" in the extended cut.

Monday, January 07, 2008

My Year of Martinis

In 2007, I started drinking martinis. (Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it was probably some time in 2006, but let's keep it simple and say 2007). They're nice, so crisp and dry and cold, and then the olive at the end, like a punctuation mark after the drink. I make mine with gin (although vodka martinis are nice in their own, mellower way), and I use the biggest olives I can find, two or sometimes even three of them. The olive is my favorite part, all marinated in gin and vermouth. And I like the whole ritual with the cocktail shaker and the big, chilled glass, all this arcane hardware to make a drink with two ingredients. I guess what I'm serving them in are actually margarita or daquiri glasses. Real martini glasses are those little teacup-size things that Nick and Nora drink out of. Which, come to think of it, I'd probably be better off using...

There was something familiar about the taste, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it seemed like a taste I knew from long, long ago. Finally, I remembered. I remember my grandma telling me how, when I was very, very young, and we'd go out to eat, I used to always eat the olives out of her drinks, and they'd ask the waiter to bring us extra olives. As far back as I can remember, I didn't particularly like olives, but apparantly when I was 2 or 3, I couldn't get enough of 'em. So I guess my martini thing was at least partially a nostalgic sense-memory.

So, like I say, I'd been on the martini tip all year, and then I got the penguin martini shaker. And I had to bring that out at the party, right? So as our holiday party was getting under way, I made a whole penguinfull of martinis, and poured myself one. Finished it up, poured another. Finished that up, continued drinking, until around 1 or 2 in the morning, when I found myself bending over the toilet throwing up. In fact, I threw up 4 times (or 4 rounds of vomiting, I guess would be more accurate). The third (or maybe it was second) time, I had gone downstairs to the back yard, and then it came over me. I hurried upstairs to the bathroom but just as I got through the kitchen, I lost it and vomited all over the dining room. And for some reason, it seems like the guests started leaving right around then.

The fourth time was the worst, because I'd really already vomited everything out of my stomach, so I was just alternating between dry-heaving and begging God for mercy. "Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh...please stop it please sto-ho-hop itBrooooooooooooaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuwwwwrrrrrrrrrrrr." Yeah, it's a Dane Cooke routine waiting to happen.

Thus ended my year of martinis.

This was the first time I'd vomited due to alcohol abuse since Spring Break '91, and the first time I'd vomited at all since visiting my parents in...couldn't have been later than '92. But I felt pretty bad for several days afterward, until Wednesday, the stomach flu finally hit me full-on. So maybe it wasn't the martinis at all--I really don't think I drank that much, and it was over the course of 6 hours or so. The stomach flu I caught in '92 hit right after eating a greasy garlic pizza, and I was sure I was just puking because of that at the time. Another stomach flu hit me after I had an omlette, and I couldn't look at eggs for months after that. But I think I am going to quit with the martinis. They're just too much! I mean, they're 2/3 liquor and 1/3 wine, in those big, weird, conical glasses that you can't really tell how much they contain. Or else I should get the Nick and Nora glasses...

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Hillary Strikes Back!



I have to say, I like Hillary a lot more when she's being angry and bitchy than when she's trying to do this nice guy act. I don't really have anything against her, I just think we have two much better choices (three before Biden dropped out). Look how tired they all are. And they have three days to go!

Also hilarious how they've all seized on "change" as the buzzword:

Obama: I represent change, and the American People want change, because it's time for a change and my mind is going through them changes in order to change the changeation.

Edwards: Changity changity changity changity choo!

Hillary: Me change too!

It's interesting. The Democrats are all pretty much on the same page as far as policy goes. The differences are mostly about tone, focus and experience. The Republicans are all over the map. Chaos. As I see it right now, Hilary's biggest threat is Huckabee, who comes off as such a likeable guy, and even he could have a tough time against her. Obama could probably lose to McCain, who would just hammer him constantly on experience (Giulliani would do the same, but he's coming off as the megalomaniac lunatic that he is now, and next to Obama's calm confidence, I think he'd look even worse). Edwards could probably wipe the floor with any of them.

I'm pretty in political junkie mode now. Can barely think about anything else.

Technophobe Blues

The one kind of geek that I am not is a tech geek. I'm always wary of new technology. I don't have a home theater--when I watch a DVD, I just watch it on my TV. I have no interest in getting an HDTV, much less in upgrading to a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player. Trying to figure out how to use new technology makes me very nervous.

So with that as a background, we've been redecorating the house, and finally 86'd a rickety old entertainment center. And the receiver on my stereo has been dying, so this seemed like a good time to upgrade. I thought it would be good to get some wireless speakers. I've never seen them, but they must exist, right? A transmitter you plug into the speaker outlet, and then you just place the speakers whereever you want. At least, I could get a unit where the speakers plug into an RCA jack. It's been 12 years since I bought this one, so I'm sure they're not still making these fire hazard speakers where you have to wrap the bare wires around the little knobs, right? And it'd be cool to get one with an iPod dock.

I tried looking at some stuff online, but it was just too confusing, so I went to Best Buy, where you can at least talk to someone about that stuff. It turns out that nobody has stereos anymore. They barely make receivers for stereos. Mostly, they're for surround sound systems. The sales guy showed me the one model that seemed to actually be for a stereo, and I was about to buy that when I realized that, contrary to what the guy told me, it didn't have an iPod dock. So I got the next one up, which was more of a complicated surround system. When I got this home and looked at the back, I almost had a panic attack. There's about 400 jacks on it! And of course, the "wireless speaker" fantasy I had doesn't exist (they did have one wireless unit, but it was just to be the back end of a surround system, and it was bulky and...just not what I was looking for), and even worse, they're still making speakers with those stupid bare wires! Why wouldn't they just put a simple RCA jack on these things?

So after a few tries, I manage to get the speakers, CD player, cassette player and iPod dock all working, but the turntable is giving me trouble. If you turn the volume way up, you can just faintly hear the record. OK, I think, I remember this one. It's the grounding wire. Turntables have this little grounding wire that has to be plugged into something or it sounds like shit. I try connecting it to the AM antenna jack, then to one of the unused speaker jacks. Nothing. So in the end, I said "fuck it," moved the turntable and the old receiver into the office to hook up to the computer so I could just use it to digitize vinyl, put it on my ipod, then play it on the dock. In fact, now I think I want to just move the cassette player in their, too.

Zane eventually informed me that it wasn't the grounding cable that was the problem, that I have to make sure it goes into one of the jacks marked "analog source," but at this point, the idea of fucking anymore with the back of the system (which of course you can't get to for shit when it's in the entertainment center) just seems like an annoyance. He also told me I wasted my money on the ipod jack, and could have just plugged it into an input jack with a wire adaptor, but I think it's nice having a dock for it.

Despite the bitching, it is great having the ipod incorporated into the stereo. For our holiday party, I went into itunes, made a 7 hour mix that started with a mix of bebop, bossa nova and cocktail lounge stuff, went up through some reggae and Native Tongues stuff, then 4 hours of hip hop, funk, punk and rock and roll, then about an hour of Zeppelin/Hendrix/Zappa/Black Sabbath-type stuff, and ending with some Coltrane, Miles and Nina Simone. Then I went through and made another playlist for the backyard, just threw a bunch of blues stuff on there, hit "shuffle", put that on the other ipod to put on the portable dock in the backyard. One less thing to worry about during the party.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Here's To Ya, Joe!

I always liked the guy, and I can't really understand how he didn't get traction, but I think we're in a good position with two really strong candidates to choose from. Right now, I could go either way--Edwards or Obama. Intellectualy, I can make a strong case for either one, but at this moment, my heart is with Obama.

And a huge hardy har at Giulliani coming in behind Ron Paul! I know it's early yet, and a lot can happen, but it seems like people loved Giulliani when the only thing they knew about him was 9/11, but the more they saw of him, the more they realized he was a joke. And hopefully, the same will happen with Huckabee. The only one on the Republican side who seems like a serious candidate to me is McCain.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Dick Clark is Creepy as Hell

Seriously, plastic surgery has preserved his boyish face, but he's got the voice of the 87-year-old man that he is. It's like something out of a science fiction satire.

Happy New Year, everybody!

We were gonna go see Juno today, but I'm so exhausted (and Bobbie's getting sick), we're just going to lay in bed all day. This is really like the first time I've had a chance to rest in about a month. Later on, I'll make some blackeyed peas and turnip greens, but that's it. I might not even shower.

I want to see Juno, Sweeney Tod, Persepolis and There Will Be Blood before I come up with a list (Oh, and Sunshine hits DVD next week), but so far, my favorite movies of the year:

No Country For Old Men
Knocked Up/Superbad
I'm Not There
Once
Grindhouse
Zodiac
Ratatouille
The Bourne Ultimatum
Hot Fuzz
Eastern Promises