Hey, remember when I used to review shit?

I'm busy so I'm time-capsule blogging this from the glorious world of yesterday. That sentence was mostly an excuse to coin the phrase "time-capsule blogging". Some movie reviews I couldn't figure out how to fit in 6 words:

Almost a week later and I'm not sure whether I can really recommend Mirrormask. It's cool-looking (and also has really good music), and I like the fact that they used CGI so it's supposed to look unrealistic and creepy, since it'll usually end up that way anyway. As far as riffs on Alice in Wonderland, it's not as good as Pan's Labyrinth but better than Tim Burton's attempt at the story is certainly going to be. I wish someone would carry over my favorite thing about the book, though, which is that it actually operates on dream logic. Nothing makes sense; nothing even comes close to making sense, but everyone, including Alice, acts like nothing all that strange is going on.

I was a little worried going into Food Inc. that it would turn into some hippy vegan preachy thing, but I was glad to be wrong. It's not about why it's wrong to eat meat; in some ways it's not even really about food. Instead, at its most interesting it's about power, and money, and the corporate mindset and how we've unwittingly attached ourselves to this destructive and shortsighted system. But not boring like I made it sound. Watch it.

It's sort of weird that Kevin Smith is back in the news, or that he's in the news at all but anyway, I just ended up seeing Clerks 2 yesterday Tuesday (stupid time-capsule blogging). I think it may be his best film, with the caveat that I haven't seen all of them (Zack & Miri Make a Porno is on my desk, because my Netflix Queue is set up weird, and I'm not going anywhere near Jersey Girl). It's sort of a small, kind of goofy movie, on one hand very realistic (for a Kevin Smith movie) and on the other hand there's a spontaneous musical number. I think it works partly because of that, and also because the first two scenes and the last shot of it are really cool, which fits that rule about three good scenes and no bad scenes (and all three have no dialogue, which is pretty hilarious considering who made this movie).
Still, nothing he ever does as a director is going to top An Evening with Kevin Smith, if only for that story about Prince. Seriously, that's the movie you've gotta see.

In case you're too lazy to read all that, I basically said Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton movie) ‹ Kevin Smith movies (except Clerks 2) ‹ Mirrormask ‹ Clerks 2 ‹ Food Inc. ‹ Pan's Labyrinth ‹‹ An Evening with Kevin Smith ‹ Alice in Wonderland (book) ‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹ the story about Prince in An Evening with Kevin Smith

Some pictures I found on my camera that I forgot I took

Guess which one is the joke one:

Something to tide you over until I have time to do a real post

Watch this: epic-length (70-flarking-minutes) teardown of The Phantom Menace. If nothing else, watch it because the reviewer sounds a little like Strong Bad.

Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

The uke abides

"Grace":

UPDATE: I gave up being such a lazy jackass for Lent* (the fact that I didn't update with this a week ago should tell you how well that's going), so here's an attempt to explain this song.

I've been playing the ukulele for a while now (exactly a week to the day after "Rise," so what should have been the first week of SoTW Year Two, and yes I have OCD). So far I'm not any good at it.

I can't really explain the title of this song except to say that like pretty much everything else I do it involves cartoons and insomnia and misplaced ambition, and that's it NOT a reference to a people's name. What I can tell is that like "Chord Storm" this evolved out of something I would do while I was practicing, and in fact I had originally (drink!) planned to post them together, but didn't have time. The idea was to do a lot of different styles-- so there's a funk section, a drummed section, a metal section, a blues section a folk section a sort of minor key flamencoesque section and and fast, surfy, tremolo picked section, not necessarily in that order and I may have forgotten one. Which is why it ended up being so long.

That said I'm kind of disappointed in this song. There are some good ideas in it but I don't think my playing is very good in it, and I had some problems figuring out how the pieces should all fit together, and just getting a good take of it in general. I think it's one of the songs I've did that definitely could be a good song (I'd list "Dread" as probably the best example of this tendency) but isn't quite there yet. Which is fine; part of the idea behind Song of the Week in the first place was to generate ideas like that. I can tell I'm getting there, though, since I was practicing this one a couple days ago and I think that what I played then worked better in terms of like musicianship and arrangement to how this one is being. That sentence contains either too few or too many words.

There was no song last week because my guitar string broke halfway through recording Sunday and it took till Saturday for me to get out to the store. Totally getting over this laziness thing.

*Lent is sort of like Catholic New Year's Resolutions, except that it lasts 40 days instead of two weeks, and instead of "giving up smoking," you're "giving up smoking for Lent."

And this is without mentioning the vampire squid

Long but worth reading; his science is so tight it must be acknowledge'd.

More video things

My favorite is the Wes Anderson one; he's been ripped off so much I can almost see that one really happening.

Forgot to Mention...

Song of the Week now available on Youtube. Exclamation Point.

It Came From the Infernets, Part i...

Seriously you guys you gotsta be watchin Lost. Otherwise you won't be able to laugh at things like this:

[Insert Meta-Reference to Lack of Recent Blog Activity]

"Chord Storm":

Words later. Tired.

UPDATE: Actually, I'm not sure there's much to say about this one. I was just playing with chord shapes until I hit on ones I liked. Unlike most of my songs there wasn't a lot of thought in it-- it sort of grew organically and I decided to go ahead and record since I felt like it was done. The hardest thing was just finding the time to do it*.

Originally I recorded drums and bass for this song, and after hearing them I sort of realized the guitar speaks for itself. Less is more, for you cliche fans out there.

*My sister has the uncanny ability to be in every room of the house at the same time. In practical terms this means a lot of background noise, which is the main reason** I haven't been able to do these for the past few weeks.

**Along with school. Never go to college, kids.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: Mixing (made it louder, EQ).