Is it time for me to bring my old Blogspot blog out of mothballs?

First Video from the latest American Idol

It's safe. It's relatively uninspired in terms of the video, but I still kind of like the song. It has a certain level of Counting Crows meets John Meyer vibe going for it. I'm disappointed that his voice has been processed so much, since I thought the rawness and occasional gravelly note was what made his singing appealing. Still, I think this is a good first foray and I'll probably take a listen to the album.

People Search For Very Strange Things

I was looking through the stats for the blog -- something I've never done because I never noticed that tab before -- and despite there being a large amount of pageviews (honestly never would have guessed that many people actually came here, unless of course, it's just one person who really really likes it for some strange reason).  I did notice that there are some very strange things being searched for, such as "latex weather balloon" and "daughter lipstick fuck".  Who are these people?  And moreover, why are they searching for it here?

Oh, and for some other reason the largest contingent of readers that I have come from Russia.  Bizarre, that, but well, "Hi, Russians!" :-)

Unintentionally Funny?

I caught Stuart Gordon's film, Stuck, tonight starring Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea.  I'd seen bits and pieces of it before, but this was the first time I had seen it all the way through.  Basically, it's about a woman who strikes a homeless man with her car while under the influence, and then proceeds to spend the rest of the film figuring out what to do with him while he continues to protrude from her windshield.  I am relatively certain that this was a plot from an episode of one of the CSI shows as well.

The film revels in incredibly bonehead reactions to the different problems in the film, which adds to the dark humour and absurdity that Gordon was likely going for, but I think the scene that stood out for me was when Suvari confronted her boyfriend's booty call, played by Sharlene Royer, and proceeded to beat her, while naked no less and with a frying pan, out of the apartment.

Why Don't You Give Me Some Love?

I caught part of the new video from James Blunt, "Stay the Night", earlier today.  I haven't necessarily been inspired to look it up on YouTube yet -- despite being catching, it felt fairly samey compared to his other work.  It did, however, make me go back an listen to his second album, All the Lost Souls.  Although the songs from his first disc, especially "You're Beautiful", got incredibly overplayed, I still quite like him.  His second disc I thought was better, so, of course it got less notice.

In general, it's fairly straight-forward guitar rock.  Kind of like David Bowie, minus the weird, and dialling the ennui up to eleven.  While listening to the album, though, I did notice that backing riff for "Carry You Home" is essentially Snow Patrol's "Run".

I could live a million years...

On his blog, Mushroom Cloud of Hiss, Chris Allen has recently been posting some rather good reviews of different albums (remasters, a couple new albums, and some classics from Roxy Music).  I`m not sure what inspired the recent spate of posts, but it`s led to a decent amount of reading, as well as a few thoughts on revisting the past myself.  Granted, I would undoubtedly come at things from an entirely different strata (I had the urge to go back and listen to some early REM and NIN discs recently, so I`d probably start there). 

I mean, I`m still waiting for my copy of Rotten Roma Casino to arrive from Germany and the new Ulver disc doesn`t arrive until sometime later this year (weird considering that there really aren`t that many days left and an announcement still hasn`t been made).

Biting off more than you can chew...

I think I've almost perfected it into a new art form.  It's like spinning plates, bowls, glasses, fire hydrants, and otters all at once.

Random Note

Archive.org's practice of actually archiving this is very strange.  Sometimes links will work, sometimes not.  Sometimes the pages that you search for will come up empty, but a link through to that page will work.  And by this, I mean pages wholly with archive.org, not external pages that are now defunct.

The Land of Pretentious Symphonic Metal

A few weeks back, Therion released a new album Sitra Ahra, the conclusion to a four-part epic starting with Lemuria and Sirius B back in 2004.  Now, I generally like Therion, but I am one to admit that there are many times when they go off the musical deep end, landing somewhere in camp show tunes territory, similar to acts like Haggard, Avantasia and Ayreon.  Although there are definitely things to like about the album, this is definitely one of the ones that takes a headlong leap into cheese, layering operatic vocals upon choirs, Thomas Karlsson trying to write some sort of ariosophic musical, and Christofer Johnson trying to ensure that one of every single instrument is used at least once. 

I've been listening to it off and on for the past few weeks, and I'm honestly not sure if I like it.  The music itself is quite good, I'll give it that, and despite the complexity of the instrumentation, you'll find that there are quite a few points that get stuck in your head.  And there's "Hellequin", which is just unintentionally funny.  I can appreciate some of what Karlsson is trying to do with the lyrics, weaving through some of the myth and philosophy that surrounds his own Dragon Rouge and beyond, but taken in pieces, most of it seems silly.  One of these days, I'll probably sit down with the lyric booklets and try to put together the narrative, especially some of the bizarre transposition of different mythological pantheons.

I will commend them for their ambition, at the very least, and it may sound as though I didn't like the album, but really, you have to be in the right mood to listen to it.

I Still Hate Duran Duran

In a recent review, Chris Allen discusses the new remaster of Duran Duran's Rio.  It's a well-written piece that you should probably read, and it almost makes me want to listen to the album, it's that persuasive, however, I don't think anything can get me past one simple fact, I still hate Duran Duran.

How to Destroy Angels

While I've been listening to the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the Social Network soundtrack, I've also gone back to listen to their other project (joined with Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig), How to Destroy Angels.  Their initial offering, a self-titled six-track EP, is a curious beast.  It's not quite female-fronted NIN, but the comparison is not quite incorrect.  I'm reminded of somewhat of Reznor's contribution to Jakalope half a dozen years ago, but harsher and mixed with some bizarre fetishistic dub music.

All the best laid plans

I've been quite enjoying Yoav's latest album, A Foolproof Escape Plan.  It's more upbeat than his debut disc, Charmed and Strange, but it's still strangely intoxicating.  The mix of electronic beats and the sound of classical guitar is still there amidst the labyrinthine rhythms.

I think my favourite track is "We all are dancing" which you can see below:

Gavin Rossdale is looking old...

Random Thought

I'm going out on a limb here, but my thought for why Marvel is keeping their solicitations hush, is that they're going to be announcing something involving Neil Gaiman & Miracleman.  I just kind of wanted to get that out there.

Ditch the Rote Hog

Inspired largely because several of my friends have decided to watch the latest few series of Doctor Who, and by the fact that I've been largely enjoying the new Matt Smith episodes (despite being finished in the UK, the last few are still to air here in Canada), I've decided to go back and watch the previous episodes.  I've also decided to see if I can lay my hands on earlier material, after looking through considerable histories of episodes, radioplays, novels and such and reading up on many of the past incarnations.

I know that I've seen many of the Tom Baker episodes, and at least a handful of the Jon Pertwee episodes, as I can remember watching them early mornings before going to school either on A&E, PBS, or TVO.  Looking at the DVD releases, though, it seems nigh ridiculous what's been released and what hasn't, haphazard and all over the place.  I also remember the TV movie; I know that I watched it, but I can't remember much about it.  I think I may start there, since I can find a copy, and the BBC radioplays with Paul McGann also seem to be available.

Doyle's Blood

"Blood", written by Roddy Doyle, is the first story in the new Stories anthology.  [Side Note: As enchanting as Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is, this anthology just keeps calling to me.  I think I'm going to alternate between reading a couple chapters of the novel with a story or two in the anthology]  It's a bizarre little tale, with its protagonist dreaming up initially a fairly plausible reason for wanting to drink blood -- anemia -- to just doing it because he wants to. 

I think the most interesting part of the tale is the repeated notion that the man who wants to drink blood -- or bite necks or have sex with most things -- is normal.  It ends with a twist that does make you think "...and then what happened?" as per Gaiman's introduction, my only hope is that with each of these stories, there is some sense of conclusion rather than ambiguous endings.

Summer Reading List

As I'm currently working my way through Carlos Ruiz Zafon's excellent The Shadow of the Wind, I've also been starting a pile of interesting new books to start tackling.  The one that keeps calling me is the new anthology, Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio; I've read the introduction, "Just Four Words" by Gaiman, and it's fairly enticing.  Also sitting on the pile is Justin Cronin's The Passage (although I'm probably going to read his previous novels, Mary & O'Neil and The Summer Guest, first), Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and finally set down to read Joe Hill's Horns.  I'm also eagerly anticipating China Mieville's new book, which I'm sure he titled just so he could say, "I'm going to realease the Kraken."

Thrilling Tales...

I've only watched the trailer so far and read some of his write up, but check out Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, it looks downright brilliant.  The art and design are gorgeous.

Unthoughts Unknown: Don't Piss On...

"The Edge", the second episode of the new Persons Unknown series, I thought was largely better than the first episode.  The pilot basically set up the situation and gave broad strokes toward the characters, this second episode gave us more showing the characters actually trying to deal a wee bit more with the situation.  It's also nice that we've finally got names for some of them, although I still think most of the relevant information on surface character background should have been related at their first dinner together.  Details and backstory naturally coming later, but it seemed like the usual introductions were only half-delivered.  The "microwave" fence, blinding white light, and driving back into the town after trying to esxape definitely gave off more vibes from The Prisoner, as well as Dark City.  The night manager and the Chinese restaurant waiter are also officially creepy.

Not Wednesday, but...Comics

My copy of the new hardcover collection of Wednesday Comics finally arrived in the post today.  I've not started to dig into it yet, but I will say a couple of things.  Like the original series, the production design is just brilliant.  I love the overall design, but what really stands out to me is the frontispiece with two different variations on the comics themselves arriving to a newsagent/front door delivery. 

The colours also look much more vibrant on this paper than they did in the original run; I think that's one of the overall things that they neglected in the series.  On most of the strips, the colours seemed to be designed for modern paper and not the newsprint that the series was printed on.  As such, some of the beauty of Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman piece was lost that's regained here. 

What I do have a complaint about, though, is that this collection is smaller than the original series.  Although this book is still oversized, it doesn't match the broadsheet view of the originals, and I think something's lost in making this book smaller.  The original series felt right in the hands, this hardcover feels a little awkward; not necessarily in length, but it feels as though it should be an inch or so wider.