Category: entertainment

Bullshit!

elvis3 Comments

You know, if you’re not watching Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT!, you need to be. This is both some of the best entertainment, and some of the best information on teevee.

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You know, if you’re not watching Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT!, you need to be.

This is both some of the best entertainment, and some of the best information on teevee.

Not every episode is brilliant. Sometimes they work a little hard to convince us that something is crap, particularly in the more recent episodes. But damn, some of these, like the one I watched tonight about Talkingt to the Dead, are simply fantastic, skewering things that simply scream out to be skewered.

Set your TiVos. But save up a few, I always want to watch two or three in a row. One bullshit isn’t enough.

Pardon my typos. There was a bottle of Toasted Head involved. I love you though. Really.

I Want It Now, Muthafucka

elvis5 Comments

I am now officially in love with Nina Gordon.Nina Gordon, late of Veruca Salt, has recorded a mind-blowing cover of NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, in the style of a Baezesque guitar folksinger.

I am now officially in love with Nina Gordon.

Nina Gordon, late of Veruca Salt, has recorded a mind-blowing cover of NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, in the style of a Baezesque guitar folksinger. It’s funny at first, then it’s beautiful, then it’s both.
–Cory on BoingBoing

Get Nina’s Straight Outta Compton.

We all have our little crushes

elvis34 Comments

I’ve got a crush.This is the sort of thing I do when I’m hung over and way short on sleep on a sunday afternoon….  This is where I hope for a baseball game, or if it’s teh right season, a hockey game.

I admit it. I’ve got a crush.

This is the sort of thing I do when I’m hung over and way short on sleep on a sunday afternoon. I turn on random things on teevee. This is where I hope for a baseball game, or if it’s the right season, a hockey game. But if I get skunked on all that, and I really just can’t get up off the fucking couch, I’ll wander aimlessly around the dial (aside – who actually remembers when teevees had dials and we had to get up to change channels?).

Usually this leaves me with a cooking show, or a documentary. Sometimes even a re-run of American Gladiators, but we’ll talk about that crush later.

Sunday, though, I stopped on a little thing called Xtreme4x4.

Now, I drive a jeep. But there’s really nothing ‘Xtreme‘ about it. I don’t do a lot of actual off-roading (I try, you know, but who has time). I don’t have it heavily customized. Who can afford it, and when most of it’s miles are road miles, what’s the point? But saturday I was out shopping for some nice new tires, and my head was all full of four wheelin’, so when I landed on Xtreme4x4 on Spike TV, my thumb rested on the remote control.

Now, I think this would have held my interest for five, ten minutes. Maybe a whole episode, but maybe not.

Only…

Jessi Combs..

Jessi Combs.

Now, these pictures all suck. The stupid bastards who did the web site think we want pictures of trucks. We don’t care about trucks. We care about Jessi. She’s way, way cuter than that when she’s moving.

She welds. She uses power tools. She customizes trucks. She has tattoos.

I Want Her.

Xt05-01200X125-1Xt06-04200X125-1Xt05-04200X125-1

Xt06-03200X125-1Xt06-02200X125-1

Xt0501-01200X125-1Xt0502-06 200X125-1

Can I add a beep to that?

elvis6 Comments

“Daddy, is there any way iTunes can add a beep to a song?””Uh.” “I mean, could we take the mp3, and, you know, make it so when it plays, it has a…”It starts to dawn on me what she’s asking.

     “Daddy, is there any way iTunes can add a beep to a song?”

     “Uh.”

     “I mean, could we take the mp3, and, you know, make it so when it plays, it has a…”

     It starts to dawn on me what she’s asking.

     “Olivia, do you mean, like, a bleep?”

     “Um. Yeah. Like, if there’s an explicit version of a song…”

     “…You want to bleep out the words, right?”

This is my eleven-year-old daughter. She wants to download songs from iTunes to put on her beloved iPod Mini. But she’s concerened, because some of the songs she wants, like several from Green Day’s American Idiot are explicit. She can’t get the clean versions, but she wants the songs.

This is where the dichotomy lies. Because on the one hand, there’s my little girl. She’s thinking, simple problem, simple solution. Solve the problem. Don’t be defeated. Don’t be afraid to change things to make them work the way you want.

On the other hand — hell. How on earth can she be related to me with an attitude like that about four letter words?

Now I just gotta find a simple sound file editor that can do what she wants, and see if she’s willing to listen to the words long enough to get the bleeps in the right place…

Stupidly funny machine gun of dirty words

elvis2 Comments

This is for the bad little kid in all of us. NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, edited down to only the explicit content.So for example the title track, which starts: Straight outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube From the gang called Niggaz With Attitudes When I’m called off, I got a sawed off Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off You too, boy, if ya fuck with me The police are gonna hafta come and get me Off yo ass, that’s how I’m goin out For the punk motherfuckers that’s showin ouIs then reduced to simply:motherfucker, niggaz, fuck, ass, motherfuckers.This reduced to me absolute giggles.

This is for the bad little kid in all of us.

NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, edited down to only the explicit content.

So for example the title track, which starts:

      Straight outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube
      From the gang called Niggaz With Attitudes
      When I’m called off, I got a sawed off
      Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off
      You too, boy, if ya fuck with me
      The police are gonna hafta come and get me
      Off yo ass, that’s how I’m goin out
      For the punk motherfuckers that’s showin ou

Is then distilled down to:

     motherfucker, niggaz, fuck, ass, motherfuckers.

This reduced to me absolute giggles.

Not work safe, not kid safe, not even safe for me.

(Thanks, as usual, to BoingBoing.)

A hat pulled down low hides the price on his soul

elvis2 Comments

And you can’t see his eyes or his longing- -A hat pulled down low Hides the price on his soul. There’s a ship which won’t be long coming; So when he gets on board You just whisper the word. Takes a last look over his shoulder, Sees the sun going down Watched by no one around So where are his friends now he needs them?

I was going to post more song lyrics.

And then I read something of Buck Daruma’s, and, you know, had to admit it means writer’s block.

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So Bad, Baby I Don’t Care

elvis1 Comment

Some days, only Motorhead will do.

Some days, only Motorhead will do.

I make love to mountain lions,
Sleep on red-hot branding irons,
When I walk the roadway shakes,

Bed’s a mess of rattlesnakes,
Voodoo child, black cat bone,
Scratch your back, hear you moan,
I get up, you go down, tall building, single bound,

War and peace and love, say it if you dare,
Iron fist, velvet glove,
I’m so bad, baby I don’t care,

Black-hearted to the bone,
Older than The Rolling Stones,
Been to heaven, been to hell,
Bought the farm, and I won’t sell,
Give and take, rise and fall, rise up and take it all,
Secret love, I won’t tell, knock you up and ring your bell,

Kiss the whip, eat the gun,
Tell me it ain’t fair, midnight victim, hit and run,
I’m so bad, baby I don’t care,

I make the blind to see,
Shoot ’em full of R and B,
I make the lame to walk,
Come ’round and pop your cork,
Wham, bam, thank you ma’am,
Thought I heard the back door slam,
Overkill, walk the line, kill the lights, it’s lampshade time,

On the road, on the lam, people running scared,
I’m everything they say I am, I’m so bad, baby I don’t care.

          -Motorhead, I’m So Bad (Baby I Don’t Care)

Fifties Jazz Essentials

elvis4 Comments

Art Pepper – Meets the Rhythm Section Art Pepper is an alto sax player; the rhythm section here is the above mentioned band from “Kind of Blue”, sans John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Cannonball…. It’s the best rhythm section of the era playing at peak, and a man who is pouring his pain and fear and love out, un-filtered, though his alto sax.

I wrote this up a year or so ago for a friend who wanted to know what jazz albums I would suggest for someone who doesn’t know jazz but wants to get started with it.

The jazz I know and love is all late fifties to early sixties. So this is a list from that era only. This isn’t a complete list. This is the albums I consider must-haves from the era, but there are, certainly, many others that I’ve missed. I’m still discovering artists I don’t know.

First – the album I consider to be possibly the best album ever made, in any genre, by any artist. “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis. No collection should be without it. If you get it and like it, there’s a fantastic book by Ashley Kahn that disects the album – what lead up to it, who’s on it, how it was recorded, and then track-by-track notes that open up some of the songs in an incredibly vivid way. I read it with the album, on head-phones, went though the tracks over and over as I was reading the descriptions. It’s fascinating, but only if one already has explored the album.

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