1990s British duo Curve walk the line (if there is one) between Shoegazer and Dreampop on their song “Frozen”:
Shoegazer Sunday: Curve’s “Frozen”
April 29th, 2012FLCL on Blu-Ray for $18.99
April 28th, 2012We now interrupt this blog for some shameless huxtering: Amazon has the complete 6-episode run of the wonderful and completely insane anime series FLCL on Blu-Ray for $18.99.
This is probably my favorite anime series of all time. It’s weird, funny, and endlessly inventive. You spend 5 episodes thinking “This is great, but it makes absolutely no sense!” And then you watch the sixth episode and go “Wait, it does make sense!” It really rewards re-watching.
It’s about a boy a who has a mysterious woman bump into and then start hitting on him. That is to say, bumps into him with her Vespa at full tilt and starts hitting on his head with her bass guitar. After that, giant robots come out of the resulting bump.
Then it gets weird.
It’s awesome. Trust me.
And if a paying media outlet wants an already completed review of FLCL that Locus Online passed on, please let me know…
Random Fark Images That Amuse Me
April 27th, 2012A continuing series:
Happy Birthday Carol Burnett!
April 26th, 2012She turns 79 today. How nice of Betty White to buy her a gorilla!
In celebration, here’s both parts of the classic “Went With the Wind!” skit.
Sure, Burnett has been immortalized on stage, screen, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But has she been given her own Barbie doll?
The answer is: Yes. yes she has, with the official Went with the Wind! Barbie Doll:
The Rockets Are Out of the Playoffs, And It’s All My Fault
April 23rd, 2012I would like to apologize to Houston Rockets fans everywhere. Two weeks ago, I said that coach Kevin McHale was doing a good job and how the Rockets were going to make the playoffs.
Naturally the Rockets immediately go on a six game losing streak, and yesterday they were eliminated from the playoffs. This will teach me to open my big, er, blog. If I had just kept it zipped, they might have managed to sneak in…
Shoegazer Sunday: Drifter’s “Fade”
April 22nd, 2012This is almost an extended loop rather than a standalone song, but it’s a very pleasant one, that seems to have been composed as a general tribute to shoegaze.
Happy Birthday Dwight! (And a bit about Prometheus)
April 20th, 2012Today is the birthday for Dwight Brown of Whipped Cream Difficulties, whom I’ve known since God was a corporal. Happy birthday, Dwight!
On the birthday theme, here’s a viral teaser trailer for Prometheus promoting Weyland Industries’ androids, that’s so straight it’s almost not creepy. Which makes it that much creepier:
Plus an imaginary TED talk from Mr. Weyland himself.
Movie Memories of Excessive Vagueness
April 18th, 2012Last Saturday I was over at A.T. and Carol’s house watching a Japanese science fiction action film called Returner (imagine every big budget American science fiction film between 1980 and 2000 being jammed into a blender and set to frappe and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the plot elements). It was fine if you didn’t mind the complete lack of originality, but we watched it because I thought it might be the one I saw a clip from a year or two ago. The problem is, while my memory of the clip is fairly clear, I can’t remember sufficient details to find it via a Google search.
In the clip I saw, people were fighting some freaky looking monsters that were obviously some sort of CGI (about the same level of the CGI in Returner, i.e. better than the Skiffy Channel’s cheap monster movies, but not as good as a major U.S. release). I think the monsters were sort of pale and slightly taller than human sized (but not multistory kaiju sized monsters). It was live action, not anime. And they were fighting in some sort of open, brightly lit interior area, like an atrium, or foyer, or perhaps somewhere in a museum. And the monsters weren’t guys in suits and didn’t look anything like the monsters on Ultraman, etc.
This should be enough to find the clip again, but it doesn’t seem to be. Maybe it wasn’t a movie, but part of a TV show. And maybe it wasn’t from Japan, but Hong Kong or South Korea. Or maybe Taiwan. (But not the Philippines. Probably.) And maybe they weren’t monsters, but aliens. Or maybe demons. Beings from another dimension? And I thought I saw it on Fark, but couldn’t find it when I searched there. Maybe it was linked from comments in the thread?
Movies I know it’s not:
Any ideas? It’s driving me to distraction…
Shoegazer Sunday: Civic’s “Tensai” and “Guitar”
April 15th, 2012This week’s Shoegazer Sunday offering is a Japanese band called Civic. First up is “Tensai”:
Here’s a live version of “Guitar,” which is a tremendously fun high energy number. Skip the first 1:20 seconds of annoying “walking on stage” intro electronica.
Like many of my Japanese shoegazer discoveries, Civic records for High Fader Records. Guitar seems to have been reborn there as “Tobacco” up on the High Fader Myspace page, and have another song called “Innocent” on their own MySpace page. They have a very coherent, appealing sound, with the male and female vocalists trading off verses. They’re probably closest to SuperCar among their Japanese shoegaze brethren, but they’re also have a bit of U2, The Beatles, The Byrds, and maybe The Ramones in their sound.
Since I don’t read Kanji, I couldn’t tell you what the name of this song is:
I would buy a full length Civic album right now if one were available in the U.S…
Brief After Action Report on the April 11, 2012 Heritage Book Auction
April 13th, 2012I wanted to do a brief follow-up on Wednesday’s Heritage Books Auction. Results were all over the map.
First, books I have trending data for:
Books I don’t have trending data for:
But the most schizophrenic result from the auction was two early signed Thomas Pynchons going for hefty sums, but two later signed copies failed to sell at all:
You would think there would be enough hardcore Pynchon collectors for those two to sell, especially the Slow Learner.
And a beat-up Shakespeare and Company true first edition (in wrappers) of James Joyce’s Ulysses went for $35,000.
As for the non-fiction first editions: