CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

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POLARITY 145

Monday, November 01, 2004

this entry brought to you by radiohead, "pyramid song"


THE GOOD

Voting I received one of those "mail in" voting ballots, and I think the idea is really cool. Except that this is my first time voting, and I want to get the whole experience. I want to wait in line! I want to wear a Nine Inch Nails shirt to scare all the old, crusty Republicans volunteering in the election office! I want to walk into the booth! I want to scream when my stupid electronic voting machine registers a vote for "George Bush" instead of "John Kerry" and make a huge scene! And dammit, I even want to get asked for jury duty a couple years down the line! Because this is America, dammit!

The Football/Election Superstition So apparently for the past 80 years, whenever the Washington Redskins play their last home game on an election year, if they win, the incumbent President stays, and if they lose, we have a new President. I couldn't give a shit about football, and superstitions are silly, but when it's stayed true for the past eighty damned years, it's enough to make me thrust my fists up and shout "Woo-hoo!" Because Washington lost. Which means Kerry's going to be our next President.

The videos of Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, and Spike Jonze DVDs The three aforementioned music video directors got together and created a group called "Director's Label", with which to release their respective DVDs, and they're all frigging brilliant. Michel Gondry (Bjork's "Army of Me", "Human Behavior"; Foo Fighters' "Everlong"), my personal favorite of the three, offers up a metric assload of his incredible, expressionistic videos-- 27 in all, plus an incredibly appealing documentary of his life, and several short movies. He's a goddamn genius, and I love telling people that the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the same guy that directed most of their favorite music videos. Chris Cunningham (Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy", Portishead's "Only You") is the second best, but offers the least videos-- 8 in all, plus a few commercials. It's so disappointing that he decided to offer so little on this DVD considering he's done at least 14 more (he says the quality of those videos is so wildly inconsistent than the ones he's most proud of, which is why there is such a spare amount), but they're at least real keepers. Spike Jonze (Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice", Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", Weezer's "Buddy Holly") is my least favorite and offers up 14 videos, most of which are more sophomoric and pedestrian than his peers. Still, he directed the brilliant Being John Malkovich and his creativity does shine through on most of them. All in all, if you're a fan of the music video artform, you'll probably overlook these DVDs (if you even know about them), but you absolutely should not. Pick 'em up on Amazon.com.

Marilyn Manson: Lest We Forget: The Best Of I've always really liked the visual style of Marilyn Manson's videos, even as far back as "Sweet Dreams" off of Smells Like Children (which was the first Manson video I ever saw). In fact, the videos off of Mechanical Animals are among the best videos ever, in my opinion. I wasn't that excited about the idea of a "Best Of" with Marilyn Manson, but when I heard the limited edition came with a DVD of all the videos for twenty bucks-- well, hell, I'd buy a DVD of just Manson's videos for 20 bucks, and a CD with the best songs off of the two CDs I didn't buy (Holywood and Golden Age of the Grotesque)? I couldn't go wrong.

The Nirvana Box Set, coming out November 23rd Much to my surprise, there aren't just one or two songs on here I haven't heard-- there are a whole shitload. Almost as exciting, some of the songs I've had bootlegged on tape ("Pen Cap Chew", "If You Must", "Token Easter Song", "Sappy", etc.) are finally going to be remastered on a frigging CD instead of being lost in a pile of tapes where I'm not even sure where they are. Fucking awesome. Can you feel how excited I am? Almost as excited as I am about the election!


THE BAD

Halloween this year Michelle wanted Celest to be able to go Trick or Treating, but, as has been the typical case for years now, there's nothing going on on Halloween! All the parties and get togethers and company-sponsored family events are on days leading up to Halloween, but never on Halloween itself. The problem this presents is that Celest is only two, and, in my opinion anyway, not old enough to be going trick or treating, even with us walking with her. I mean, don't you think it would be awkward when you hear a knock on the door, and the kid standing there is too young to even be eating the candy you're handing her? Celest's cousins, who are 8 and 5, live too far away for their mother to want to drive by and pick us up, and our friends with kids this age aren't going to be around. Halloween has been a bust for me for years now, but now that I have a kid to enjoy Halloween with, it's sad that it's still a bust. And that's not even to mention that nobody wants to call their parties Halloween parties anymore, in favor of "Harvest Get Togethers", completely oblivious to the fact that Harvest Festivals are closer to the original Pagan routes than traditional devil-and-ghost Halloween parties.

No Halloween entry yesterday I couldn't think of anything at all to write about on Saturday, and then I came across some paparazzi pictures of Britney Spears with absolutely terrible acne that I thought would be scary enough for a Halloween entry. Problem is I've lost the password to my ftp site and the picture was too big to img src it, and posting a link to it just wouldn't have had the same affect, so I just gave up on posting something for Halloween.

Christopher Reeves' death I don't mean to be mean or unsympathetic, because I was really, really touched by Reeves' situation and his mission to walk again. I'm always really sympathetic to these sorts of things because I consider myself an artist; to lose control of my limbs would mean I'd be utterly useless. I suppose the same could be said about any person, artist or not, but it's still how I think whenever someone is paralyzed, if I were in that situation, what would I do? But, despite his hopes and his dreams, I didn't really think that he would ever walk, and I honestly don't think, in his heart, he believed it either. So I wasn't really all that sad when he died. I mean, if it weren't for him, not nearly as many strides would've been made towards finding a cure. So he didn't get to walk-- at least through research that he helped fund, someone in five or ten years might be able to. I think it would've been much sadder if he didn't manage to get any research in the field at all. I don't know if I'm making sense here. Hmmm.

The Negro Telletubby I don't know if you're a semi-regular Telletubby watcher, but if you have kids at all, I can almost bet that you are. The Telletubbies all have different colors: red, green, orange, and purple. But their faces are all a pale caucasion tone. Well, if you have seen any of the recent ones-- and they're rare because they mix them in with the older episodes-- you'll see that the green one, Dipsy, suddenly has brown skin for no explainable reason. Listen, if there were always a black Telletubby, I'd be like, right on. But when a Telletubby turns from caucasion to negro, it really freaks me out. Talk about pointless politically correctness! They are fictional creatures with televisions in their stomaches! They don't need to have different races!

Lindsay Lohan Not only are she and Hillary Duff in a totally artificial and bratty catfight in the media, but Lindsay Lohan has just announced she was going to make pop music. Wow. I can't fucking wait. Why aren't these idiot parents of these idiot brat superstars afraid of overexposing their moron kids?
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with love from CRS @ 7:39 AM 

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