Jan

31

Moving and working.

Filed Under Personal | 4 Comments

I’m moving to Olympia this weekend. And I got a job today.

Jan

30

Channel 102 Roundup.

Filed Under Channel 101 | 1 Comment

Top spot this month? “Defenders of Stan,” in its funniest episode to date. Although lacking somewhat in plot, and containing a blatant (and acknowledged) Superman II rip-off, episode four of “Defenders” provided me more chuckles than the first three episodes combined. Most of them came from the Family Circus discussion toward the end and the “curses” discussion in the middle. Kudos.

In second place, “The Rewinder.” The humor here seems to depend upon the audience member finding profanity and over-the-top torture amusing. What’s truly odd is that I do find profanity and torture amusing, and yet still don’t find “The Rewinder” all that funny. I’m also at a loss to explain what 101-style overreaching effects and underwhelming polish is doing on 102. Not impressed.

“The Jon and Jess Variety Hour” provides charming sketch comedy, aggressively low-budget effects, and a few belly laughs. Starts out strong, peters out toward the end, though. Jon and Jess may want to revisit the first rule of successful sketch comedy: keep is short. Nevertheless, highly recommended.

The extremely good-looking pilot “U.K.M.” (which stands for “Unstoppable Killing Machine”) debuted at number four. Deserves to be higher. The premise is tight, the acting is superb, plot legs are built in, and the whole thing is shot with a supreme competence. I give “U.K.M.” four episodes before it peters out, and then big things for Dan McInerney long-term.

The animated “S.H.R.T.M.S.” (which stands for “Sorority House Reject Teen Mystery Solvers;” what’s with the abbreviated titles?) rounds out the primetime. A very strange offering indeed. The characters are odd enough to be interesting, yet cliched enough to be familiar. Sort of. But I’m not sure what the plot of the show is going to be, ultimately. If I understood the first episode (which is not exactly clear), all the loose ends are pretty much wrapped up. Almost as if “S.H.R.T.M.S.” was meant to be a throwaway, but was accidentally picked up. Huh.

Jan

30

Channel 101 Roundup.

Filed Under Channel 101 | 3 Comments

After a three month hiatus, Channel 101 is back. The absence ought to make the heart grow fonder. Instead, it makes top dog “Your Magic Touched Me Nights,” which has a cliffhanger gapfiller video in lieu of a full-blown fourth episode, seem like all the more a cheat. Disappointingly short, and decidedly not stand-alone, “Nights” is somewhat jarring for its change-in-format. The saving graces? The polish is still there. The jokes are still dead-on (especially a wig-related gag in the “next time on” trailer). And although jarring, I actually do welcome a multi-episode story arc involving Bizarro characters.

Second place this month goes to the second episode of “Exposure.” Unfortunately, the sophomore effort did not live up to the promise of the pilot. Shot almost entirely in montage, in an extremely half-assed sort of way, with an intentionally wasted cast, whatever the meta point is supposed to be gleaned from “Exposure” is obscured by the episodes’ sheer unwatchability. All the worst excesses of Fellini with none of the virtues. Boo.

I continue to be puzzled by the presence of the lumbering dinosaur “Classroom” in the primetime. But there it is, at number three. This week’s episode brings mental retardation to the fore, but without the sort of exaggeration that might have elicited laughs, and without the sort of heart that might have elicited sighs. Bright point? The choice of the Black Eyed Peas to play over the central montage of retarded-baiting.

Newcomer “Reporters” has one of its characters ask, “Wow, what the fuck was that shit?” toward the end. Indeed.

The most redeeming feature about “Quest” is its habit of ridiculing its own plot devices. In the World of 101, calling bullshit on a can of magical corn is a fresh approach somehow. While I am a little worried that the “Big Lemons” development will ultimately take “Quest” to the excesses of later episodes of “28 Day Slater” (i.e. Tartikoff), I stand behind my assertion that, last place notwithstanding, “Quest” is the best of this month’s primetime.

Jan

30

Snowboarding rap duo.

Filed Under Music | Leave a Comment

For a sort of amusing, but actually quite good, glimpse at some mid-90s teenage rap duo video, complete with snowboarding, check out the Whooliganz’s “Put Your Handz Up”:

[From Super Special Questions.]

Jan

29

A Monkey Throw Feces review…in Chinese.

Filed Under Music | 2 Comments

While searching through Yodelling Llama’s referrals, soft-black-star.blogbus.com stuck out as something I hadn’t seen before. So I took a gander. Most of the site is written in Chinese. But I was still able to gather it is a music blog of some sort. And there, in a post dated from two days ago, was a Monkey Throw Feces image. Not knowing Chinese very well, I ran it through Babelfish. As usually happens when I use Babelfish to translate Chinese-to-English (or Japanese-to-English), the results came out a bit garbled. But here’s what came out:

2007-01-27
The monkey throws the bowel movement

Tag: Listens

Http://music.download.com/i/mdl/media/10/05/18/43/0/100518430.jpeg

Monkey Throw Feces

Location: Djibouti

Genre: Comedy/Novelty/Spoken Word

Their Space:Http://myspace.com/monkeythrowfeces

Djibouti monkey

Djibouti is located northeast Africa, the population 740,000, originally is the colony for the law, in 1977 was independent. There possibly produces the monkey.

The monkey throws the bowel movement orchestra, is jumps out from this plateau mountainous region African small country. They establish or in 1972, that little while Djibouti did not call the republic. But it is said only performed to dismiss, the reason was the audience “the coordination”, “the monkey” on really does not face under to throw the bowel movement. Perhaps this also is their name origin.

The colonizing belt putrefied in the past the life style, these strange musics which the colonizing descendants did in the afterwards year, also passed to in the black skin people’s ear. After 25 years, two psychopaths a tattoo direction, are reorganized the monkey to throw the bowel movement. Has not been wrong, listens to meet crowd of insane monkeys on the elephant in the woods. This section enough wrote a novel. Certainly, they only have continued to use this “was great” the name, how threw the bowel movement as for the original these monkeys, who cared about. Afterwards they then in Djibouti capital Djibouti city (there estimate also on such a city) an underground music circle night becomes popular all at once. The style is disorderly, Lian Jiafeng Kyle also is their spiritual teacher one, the ballad, Africa, the sounds of people, the electron and even the experiment, has not seen in the style to have Novelty.

Very long has not heard to the such lovable song, you are unable the imagination next section of appearances, is similar to listens to the signal not good broadcasting station in the jungle. They are a crowd run the monkey from the jungle which randomly calls to the prairie on to jump madly, crazy is confused, seeks pleasure in all directions.

Two patients as well as member: Jor-El □, Gut-Bucket, innumerable monkey

Goes to this tin

PS: The summer has come, this lovable chart must draw to on mine T.

Lovely, right? I ought to call my brother and see if he wants to turn this into a song.

Jan

29

Leslie Halliwell.

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Being a relative youngster, I had not ever heard of film critic Leslie Halliwell until a couple of days ago. What changed? BoingBoing linked to a list of those films Halliwell gave four (out of a possible four) stars. Why is this significant? I suppose part of it is that Halliwell supposedly has good taste. There’s something to that, I suppose. Looking at the list, there aren’t too many films on there that I have seen that I would rate below three stars. The other part? Halliwell is supposedly a particularly discriminating critic. Which I translate to mean something along the lines of “he hates a lot of movies.” Or “he doesn’t like very many movies.” I’m not sure this is a particularly good quality to have as a film critic. But it is an interesting frame of mind to place a film’s default rating at zero stars, and make the film work to get out of the basement. Rather than what I suspect is the norm of starting at two stars and letting the film move things up or down.

Halliwell has an odd quirk that he was repeatedly faulted for: he preferred older movies. To the point where not one film received four stars from 1967-1989 (when he died). [So why does the above-linked list include post-1989 four star films? The list is taken from a book bearing Halliwell's name. Some other cat is tacking on new reviews to Halliwell's decades-long output. Also seems to have good taste. Enough that I added everything to my Netflix queue, at any rate.] For an fascinating read on this old-centricness, check out Halliwell’s 1978 essay, “The Decline & Fall of the Movie.” Fascinating because he seems to be demanding some of the developments of the past decade (e.g. increase of sequels, comfort of home). Fascinating because he seems to be bemoaning some of the aspects of the film industry that have only become worse lately (e.g. hit-centricness [would Halliwell have dug on the long tail?], director worship, on-location shooting). Fascinating because he’s so down on other critics who emphasize “true art” status for film. Fascinating because he’s so crotchety (e.g. non-ironic use of expression “good old days”).

Jan

28

The Lady from Dubuque.

Filed Under Theater | 1 Comment

The Seattle Rep has a thing for Edward Albee. When Deb and I went to see the Rep’s production of The Lady from Dubuque, the lobby was littered with advertising-as-art exhibits for past and future Rep productions of Albee plays. Four or five of them. Is there a Seattle-Albee connection I’m missing?

Dubuque is only the second Albee play I’ve seen in any form, and only the first I’ve seen staged. [I have seen, and loved, the Mike Nichols-directed film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.] While Dubuque is not exactly Albee’s most revered or famous work, I found it fantastic. There’s something about successfully drawing the humor out of death that affects and impresses me. Deb thought there too much shouting and anger to make the play an enjoyable experience. But I thought the anger invigorating. I also found the subtext satisfyingly obscured. Discovering who the titular character was (or at least postulating) using the clues (Oscar’s “thieves, murderers, relatives come to call, and house inspectors” speech was particularly helpful and delightful) presented an interesting couple of hours post-performance.

Lovely play, and highly recommended.

Jan

28

Blue Scholars vs. Modest Mouse.

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The Seattle Times ran a blurb today recommending a mashup of Blue Scholars’ “Inkwell” and Modest Mouse’s “Float On.” The track is available for streaming only on Blue Scholars’ Myspace page under the title “Inwell remix 2006.” Recommended.

Jan

26

Affordable health care.

Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment

Something else I thought of when writing the health insurance piece: the cost of health care itself. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, it is rising. Primary reason: advancements in medicine. New techniques, drugs, etc. cost money to develop, and that’s piling on to the overall health-related spending. The cost of treating cancer one hundred years ago was negligible, because there really wasn’t a treatment.

Unpalatable idea, but I’ll throw it out there: single-payer health care for all old procedures. Say, everything at least twenty years old (to get rid of patent protection). That’s how to make health care affordable. And how to demonstrate that affordable health care’s not all its cracked up to be.

Jan

26

“I Smoke Some Grass (Really Really High).”

Filed Under Music | 4 Comments

I absolutely adore Ween. But one of the most irritating songs of all time has to be a “Push th’ Little Daisies” B-Side called “I Smoke Some Grass (Really Really High).” Glorious.

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