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 219

Monday, November 20, 2006

this entry brought to you by giant drag, "pretty little neighbor"


THE GOOD

The Royal Tenenbaums Wes Anderson has always had this awesome way of matching the outright absurd (Max's climactic high school play in Rushmore, Steve Zissou's cartoon shark nemesis, or the precariousness of the Tenenbaum children here), with deep, personal drama. Here, the large Tenenbaum clan (a father, two sons, one adopted daughter, their mother and her suitor, and a childhood friend) are all going through separate mid-life crises, while Royal Tenenbaum, the father, and one of the biggest asshole dads you'll encounter in movies, attempts to make amends with his family for his wrong doings. Of course, he's still an asshole regardless of his intentions, so he goes about getting his family back together in the wrong ways. What makes Tenenbaums-- and really, all Anderson movies-- work is that, despite the characters' quirkiness and irregularities-- Chas and his boys' matching track suits, Margo secretly smoking behind her loved ones' backs since she was 12, Eli's constant cowboy hat for no apparent reason, they and their problems are all relatable, and this is thanks in no small part to the stellar cast, who are all at their comedic best.

Giant Drag, Hearts and Unicorns Giant Drag don't seem like they would be a very talkative band. On the back cover with the track listing is a picture of drummer Micah Calabrese, who sits, wearing a shy smile, looking away from the camera as if to say, "Yes, I am definitely the quiet one." Singer/Guitarist Annie Hardy, though, doesn't seem much of an extrovert, either. On the front cover she sits, a pocket knife in hand, poking it into her leg, looking at the viewer with sleepy eyes and a half smile, as if the innocent-looking waif in the back of the class that only opened her mouth to tell ridiculously off-colored jokes (see song titles like "Kevin is Gay", "My Dick Sucks", and "You Fuck Like My Dad"-- but the songs don't actually have anything to do with the titles). Her band, which consists of herself, Michah, and on the album several session players, play dreamy, fuzzy indie pop about what sounds like a past relationship Annie has had, yet she doesn't seem bitter, just annoyed and so over it-- or at least will be as soon as this album is over. The music and lyrics are typical of the debut album of a band with members this young, that is, simple, but Giant Drag get by almost entirely on childish charm and Annie's adorable kitty-cat-on-valium-like coo (in fact, she meows-- literally-- her way through an entire verse on the opening track). Giant Drag has a song called "You're Full of Shit (check out my sweet riffs)", but they don't come off as wanting to rock that ass. Instead, they want to be your eccentric, introverted best friends.

The Nintendo Wii Although Nintendo's probably been my most consistent first-party love since the beginning of my experience with games, I'm no fanboy. There are things that disappoint me about the Wii-- it's difficult to look at the games and not say, okay, I understand they want to give me a cheaper, more enjoyable system, but couldn't they give it more of a graphical boost at all? And the name, I've long since gotten used to it, but it's still annoying that the system I'm looking forward to the most has the worst name for any system ever. And I'm also scared that the developers will give up on it before they can figure out how to get past the novelty stage and realize the full potential of integrating it into games. Nevertheless, the idea of a system that so radically rethinks the idea of how you control its games, almost to the point where the controller itself becomes almost non-existent, it's just you interacting directly with the game, is perhaps the most revolutionary idea in gaming since the invention of 3D.

The PS2 I was very hostile towards the PS2 when it first came out, and seeing Sony botch the launch of the PS3 (though they will of course say it was a huge success, saying it sold out all over the country!), you can see why. Over the years I've had a love/hate relationship with it. Sony has remained so disgustingly arrogant as ever, and their fucking system started giving me problems a few years ago and won't play DVDs, blue-backed PS2 games, and gives me a hard time with the remainder of the PS2 games with gold backs despite that I my system was bought a full 6 months after the glitchy launch ones (by comparison, my Dreamcast works just fine 7 years after its launch). Still, it does amuse me that out of the four games I want most right now-- Okami, Bully, FF12, and Zelda, 3 of them are for the PS2.

Crazy-Awesome 8 Year Old Drummer It occurred to me that I haven't shared a link from YouTube in a while, and I realized I had the perfect link in mind to share with you. A longer version of this clip exists somewhere showing the kid's whole performance, but whoever uploaded this clip got the best 2 and a half minutes of it. You absolutely, positively must give this link a click, even if you have only a passing interest in music. This kid is amazing.


THE BAD

The PS3 Launch So here we have, again, one of the most hyped video game systems ever-- although, for the record, not as hyped as the PS2-- being released, and as before, Sony is releasing miniscule amount; only 400,000 to the whole country. The PS2 launch had a good chunk of people in the speculative market waiting outside for days, only to resell the systems for stratospheric prices on Ebay; this time around this greedy tactic isn't a secret, and the majority of the people weren't in line for videogames, but for profit. Then you combine all this together with bad, November weather and insane media hype (and the fact that stores nonsensically let far more people camp outside than they knew they'd be getting shipped), and you get fist fights, mini-riots, stabbings, shootings, and robberies reported across the country. All of this could have been prevented with a serviceable amount of systems (analysts have reported Sony sent less PS3s than even the miniscule amount they promised) from Sony. So after all this idiocy has cleared, the general population sees the violence as being symptoms of the stereotypical antisocial gamer, and greedy Ebay auctioneers find that there simply isn't the market for these thousands of hideously overpriced PS3s, meaning they're stuck with a 600 dollar machine they don't want, what will we have? Well, seeing as how first generation Sony machines have a nasty habit of breaking down mere months after launch, we're going to have a whole bunch of gamers with 600 dollar paper weights, while people who wait just a few months will be able to play the exact same games, only on a cheaper, more reliable machine, and they won’t have to wait in line for three days during horrible weather to get one. This whole thing just doesn't make any sense.

Jon Kyl beating Jim Pederson in Arizona Senate I don't know how I forgot to mention this the week of the election. In the months leading up to it, there were these campaign ads for a man named Jon Kyl, and it didn't mention party affiliation. But they made me real uncomfortable. They would go on and on and on about how the opposition was week on terror and supported illegal immigrants; one ad stated that Jim Pederson had-- gasp!-- supported a law that would allow them to get driver's licenses! Now, I don't know if you knew this, but people will drive cars whether they legally can or not, and I personally would rather give a bunch of non-English-speaking illegals the chance to learn to drive properly, rather than only giving them the choice to drive like they do in Mexico. Anyway, these commercials were really ominous, and made me feel like illegal immigrants and terrorists were going to stab me in my sleep. Of course it turned out Jon Kyl was Republican. I was disappointed when he won the recent election, but at least all the propositions I was gunning for and most of the other Democrats running ended up winning.

The tabloid coverage of Anna Nichole Smith and her dead son I saw on the cover of one of these disgusting magazines the headline, "How her son really died." Listen, about 9 months ago when the cover of every tabloid seemed to shriek in a shrill, Fran Dresher voice, "Where's pictures of the baaaaaby? When are we gonna see the baaaaaby?", my flesh crawled. But with Anna Nicole Smith I'm genuinely offended. I see her face on 9 different tabloids for weeks-- leave the poor grieving mother alone! I know it's too much, at this point, to ask, "Have you people no decency?" because decency went out the window several years ago when the tabloid boom hit. But I do have to ask, are the idiot housewives that are the main demographic for tabloid bullshit so hard-up for entertainment as to buy this shit?

The unwitting participants of the Borat movie suing To be honest, I do feel bad for people who didn't know they were going to be in the nation's number one movie for two weeks in a row that lost their jobs because of their appearance in it. But you know, it sucks being caught with your pants down, doesn't it?
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with love from CRS @ 6:06 PM 

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