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Jun
30th

Mon

village voice > blogs > Status Ain't Hood > Status Ain't Hood Says Goodbye Much respect to Tom Breihan, one of the best music critics in the biz. (Also, the tallest.) He’s moving on to some other gig, and bless him. I’m really glad that he’s getting paid for what he does, and I hope that he’s got a better home now.

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As Gas Prices Rise, Teenagers’ Cruising Declines - NYTimes.com

therichgirlsareweeping:

FYI, everyone — this is why there is no definitive summer jam. You can quote me on this.

Yes, suddenly it all makes sense.

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jeffbaum:

Chris Matthews runs an Anti Baby-Boomer George Carlin bit, followed by a “Just for Men” ad that is, too perfectly, EXACTLY what he was bitching about.

Ha, this is so perfect that I’m convinced that the entire reason Matthews aired that particular Carlin bit was because he hated that sponsor/ad.

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Animation isn’t a genre — it’s a medium, just another way of telling stories. Of course Wall-E is “an exception to the animation realm”; in animation, as in live-action, most movies are crappy and don’t deserve Best Picture nominations. But when a movie comes out that is great, one of the best of the year, it ought to be considered for Best Picture regardless of the medium it’s created in. And if the Oscars want to become relevant to the average moviegoer again, they could do worse than to nominate a movie like Wall-E — a movie the average moviegoer loves.

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Jeffrey Wells Argues Against an Oscar for ‘Wall-E’: ‘Animation, Stay On Your Side of the Fence’ — Vulture — Entertainment & Culture Blog — New York Magazine

It’s never made much sense, but while I absolutely love drawings, cartooning, and comic books, I’ve never been a fan of animation. I recognize that I have this bias, and that it’s kinda arbitrary. However, this doesn’t keep me from thinking that Wells’ argument against animated films being nominated for Best Picture is hateful and moronic, or from acknowledging that Wall-E is a full-on masterpiece and deserves not only the nomination, but the award as well.

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16. Reign In Blood

tomewing:

There was some interview where Morrison said that Final Crisis is the “death metal” version of the DC Universe - given his interest in making comics ‘feel like’ pop (cf Marvel Boy) I wonder if this explains some of the pacing decisions: grand uber-symphonic sweeps expressed using complex and technical and deceptively crude means.

That makes a lot of sense, especially given the major themes of the story thus far.

I haven’t read any of it, but I read somewhere that Matt Fraction was deliberately being very metal about his recent Thor work. Which would be smart, you know, because if any comic should be overtly metal, it ought to be Thor.

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Jun
29th

Sun

What I don’t get–and I don’t want to be a dick here (NOTE: THIS IS A LIE)–are the people who say that it’s hard to follow or understand, because the Final Crisis that I’m reading is pretty straightforward. And I don’t mean that it’s straightforward by Grant Morrison standards, I mean that it’s straightforward by comic book standards. I’ll be the first to admit that there are a lot of references thrown in there that are rewarding for people who do get them, but in the issues we’ve seen, a meticulous knowledge of the characters isn’t all that necessary. Comics characters, after all, are based around visual shorthand to begin with, and even without a footnote pointing you to his earlier adventures (which you oughtta read anyway), it’s not hard to figure out all you need to know about Sonny Sumo from his actions within the story.

To be fair, there’s stuff going on that hasn’t been explained, but I’m pretty sure that’s because a story is not an article, and occasionally creators like to hold some information back to build tension. Just a thought.

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Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog » Blog Archive » The Week In Ink: June 25, 2008

Right on.

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Majoring in Art at the state university appealed to me because I have always hated Art, and I had a hunch if any school would treat the subject with the proper disdain, it would be one that was run by the government. Of course I was right. My suspicions were confirmed by the minute I entered the Visual Arts building on arrival my freshman year and took in the faculty show in its gallery. I beheld: melting lop-sided Umbrian? hillsides, nudes run over by the Cubist Express, suburban-surrealist flower ladies going about their daily tasks weeping blood tears the size of water balloons, and kittens. Yes, kittens. I thought, “Now *these* people hate Art *a lot*. *This* is where I belong. Perfect.

— From Chip Kidd’s novel The Cheese Monkeys. He’s a terrific novelist, if you didn’t know.

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Jun
28th

Sat

Professor Splash: Professional High Dive Daredevil Extraordinaire

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Newsarama.com : WWC-THE BENDIS JOHNS PANEL I defy you to read this article about a comic convention panel without coming to the conclusion that Brian Michael Bendis is a ridiculously smug tool.

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7. Black Dice, “Endless Happiness”
“I don’t know why the generation of New York bands that included Black Dice, Gang Gang Dance, Excepter, and Animal Collective didn’t get the Seattle ’91 treatment. Maybe it’s weird, but I mean, to me, ‘Endless Happiness’ is great barbecuing music.

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Bonus Summer Playlist: Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth Makes You a Mix Tape — Vulture — Entertainment & Culture Blog — New York Magazine

Gee, Dave, there’s soooo many reasons! Aside from a handful of decent tracks by Animal Collective and Excepter, their collective lack of tunes is certainly the best answer. No cult of personality, there’s another answer. They aren’t conventionally exciting live acts — that’s a big one. Also, they may be arty and bohemian, but they’re all pretty hacky?

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Jun
27th

Fri

Liz Phair - Untitled New Song, 06.25.08 Hiro Ballroom

This is very exciting and promising! I’d like for her to record this more or less as it’s being played here, with maybe some minimal percussion etc.

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Jun
26th

Thu

Apparently, Six Flags feels sanguine about the recession because, in their estimation, people who would otherwise have got on a plane to Orlando or Anaheim for long weekend will instead get in a car, go to Six Flags and spend a day. So, the patrons they lose from the bottom are replaced by ones they gain from the top. I like the idea that this trickles upwards until at the very top a Russian oligarch decides only to melt down the five fabergé eggs and have them smelted into a pair of shiny metal pants in which to oil-wrestle supermodels.

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spyinthehaus: Possibly of limited interest…

Dan is writing about this recent Six Flags investor presentation.

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Alex Balk is truly the best in the biz.

Radar Exclusive! Emily Gould Book Proposal!

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Yeah, bloated music videos are what ended music videos, not like you know, the fact that music videos large or small aren’t being played on TV anymore. It’s the venue, not the aesthetic choices, which I think this guy secretly knows. And! There’s 100 times more unwatchable fan-created garbage out there than good stuff, and even the great stuff looks like garbage on Youtube. I don’t want fan-created videos to redefine music promotion. I don’t ever want to see a homemade light-saber battle again, either. I want talented artists with video-making talent to make videos and put them on TV again. There’s a reason why the majority of people who make music videos do it professionally. It’s hard, and it takes more than a torrented version of Final Cut to do it well. Access to technology ≠ access to actual creative skill that people want to watch, not which is just dumb enough to drive people to iTunes.

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marathonpacks: cigarette math is full of surprises: Is There Even A Middle Ground Anymore

Eric Harvey is totally right on. I have so much animosity for tech people who get all excited about technology, but seem entirely indifferent to the quality of art. It’s just a lot of assholes eager to bury the signal amid unprecedented levels of noise, because “yay democratization!” is a convenient way of putting a happy face on a paradigm shift that favors tech companies and literally devalues art and artists.

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