summertime and life is good. Might be covering comiccon this year, but I have a term paper due the next day so...

So, I made a new friend today. He's a really, really big geek. Like, he laughed when I quoted 4 year old AICN message board catch-phrases. He even understood my Superman-is-powerless-on-a-planet-with-a-red-sun joke. He's a cool guy.

He also gave me this poster...



You know, because he just had an extra one lying around.

I pitched HH! to MTV. They passed, but it was exciting to do it anyway. I wrote up a pretty good pitch packet for the show and so now I have something ready in case any other options present themselves. Up next for that is film festivals. Hopefully something with Cartoon Network, but that has been more difficult that it originally appeared.

In other news, my screenplay "The Gallows" won me a 5k scholarship in a screenwriting contest at my school. It was judged by some pretty big TV producers and Scott Frank (Minority Report, Get Shorty) so that was cool. Now I'm gonna start working on another screenplay with my mentorhuman and I'll have it ready for send out to try and get an agent by the time I graduate.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/5865344490dfb2e0/

From Mike Skinner's twitter. 2 more coming this week.

Earlier today, while waiting for a friend to pick up her jacket before heading to dinner I spotted something odd sticking out of the top of a nearby dumpster. Upon further investigation I discovered that the "something" was actually the box of a vintage, 1940's era, William Fuld Oujia Board.

I was so fuckin' stoked. I've been trolling thrift shops for about 2 years looking for an old, abandoned Ouija board and now a really nice one (with all its original parts intact) has fallen into my lap.

Badass.

So, I had my meeting at fox last week. It was scheduled for shorter than it ended up being, which is a good sign. The guy really seemed to like us and he seemed to get the concept. Cool guy too.

Miner says we should know by Tuesday if anything will come of it.

So, older black men hit on my girlfriend ALL THE TIME.

WTF.

Old is the New Young
By Hunter M. Daniels
1/24/09

It was about 2025
When our society’s collective pedophilia finally reached its zenith

Necrophilia

The earliest recorded note of this look
Occurred on March 7, 2024
7th-grader Bridget Mathieu stopped putting on makeup
Instead, she began to apply
Thick circles of Grease
All around the edges of her eyes
To give it what she deemed,
come-hither poutiness

In March of the next year
Media darling
Lydia Fitzpatrick stopped wearing bras.
Not because of feminism
But rather to give her chest that hip
“saggy and hanging look”


Almost over night
The Mohawk disappeared
Replaced by
Faux male pattern baldness
It was seen as a sign of sexual open-mindedness
For a girl have one of these doo’s

And the really kinky girls
Started getting
drenchers.

That summer,
thick eyebrows
were all the rage
and a unibrow
could have made you prom king

the next February,
“Rock it Like a Septuagenarian”
hit number one
on the pop, rock, hip-hop,
and adult comtemporary charts
all during the same week

before long
14 year-old’s stopped smoking pot behind the local taco bell
instead they were giving each other
liver spot tattoos

rebellious middle schooler’s weren’t dying their hair
purple
they were buying
Just-For-Men
Salt and Pepper comb-in dye
By the gallon

And girls who once threw up
Until you could see
Their ribs
Were now lining up in order to get
Double chedder
Double meat
On their western bacon cheese burgers
All just to get that oh so chic
Cellulite

Before long, kids were 
busting their kneecaps
just to get a wheelchair
or better yet
a walker

In one case in Missouri
Little Jamal Warner
An 11-year old latchkey child
Was caught
Jamming something up his ass
Trying for a legitimate excuse
To get around the school’s
Zero tolerance policy regarding
Depends brand adult diaper usage

By 2032
It was more common for a
5th grade girl to have had
Outpatient skin stretching surgery
than to have had her ears pierced


Kids were reading again
Knitting was bigger than football
The streets were empty after 5:30 PM

Gucci even started making
$3000 a pair
trifocals
In your choice of
Black of Red

Kids would drop acid
And perform every day tasks
As a way to mimic dementia

They used shrooms
To imitate Alzheimers.

Now we look back on all of that and think
“how quaint”
but boy it sure was something at the time
boy it sure was.

Gilliagan's Island. Except, the island is Cthulu.

Hip-Hop and Rap are inherently political art forms. The outward rage and misogyny are not literal. It's a genre about a generation of young men who were abandoned by their fathers and felt unwelcome in their own country. They were all extremely disenfranchised youths who grew up with an acquisition complex as a result of their poverty. 

Stripped of the basic things that you or I might have taken for granted in our childhoods, these men, almost none of whom had a father figure, cling to ideas of hyper-masculinity. They had nothing else to grasp to. But as they got older, they began to discover that the hyper-masculinity was actually a simulacra for something they were missing on a much deeper level. Many of these men began to react with rage expressed toward anyone who did not fit into their bubble of hyper-masculine behavior (namely, women and homosexuals). Eventually, the smarter set of these men realized that the outward misogyny (which I do find hard to stomach) was actually a sort of synechode for the disenfranchisement itself. And there is a sort of half-conscious understanding of that amongst artists by this point.

Also keep in mind that most of the roots of hip-hop come from Funk music (which had a large African pride contingent) and the words of Beatnik poetry from the likes of Black Panthers (at a point when the Panthers were not what they would later become).

These men are trauma survivors. They probably have pretty severe PTSD. I wouldn't be surprised in a large number of them wet the bed into their teen years. The entire art form is about trying to put meaning to the suffering they went through.

Really, most of Gangster rap and modern Hip-Hop is...well, it's like an extended version of the book of Job. It's all about dealing with the problem of evil.

This week has been disheartening on the internet front.

First I was banned from the official Saw message board for daring to complain about the gratuitious sexualized violence of the latter sequels. Then, I go to one of the various conservative blogs I read and I see this story, bighollywood.breitbart.com/smason/2009/01/17/notorious-shootin/

I really want to believe that Republicans and Democrats alike just want what is best for the country. But it becomes increasingly hard to believe as I see posts like this on thread after thread of right leaning blogs. It'

Worse yet, I was denied the ability to respond to the persona insults lobbed my way. Below is my (censored) response to the bigotry found in the boards.




Less than a month ago there was a shooting at a screening of Benjamin Button. No one posted stories about like this then. Furthermore, there is clearly a subtext of race to this article and to the responses. The baseline rejection  of black culture and the inference that it is worthless because it doesn't mimic your expectations of what "Culture" should be, is in fact racist.

The very fact that you conflate this situation with Obama proves my point. You wouldn't relate Robert Downey Jr. with President Bush and say, "typical white coke-head" but you confuse Christopher Wallace with Barrack Hussein Obama...why is that?

White men are allowed to act poorly without casting blame on all white men, but if one black man does something (and we don't even know if anyone was black, much less saw the movie as the incident happened in the friggin' lobby). You cast black's as a monolithic force. That is racist. It denies the autonomy of the individual and actually makes you a crappy conservative too. Personal responsibility anyone?

Racism can still exist with a black President. If Joesph Lieberman have been VP in 2006 I still would have been pistol whipped 8 times by Nazi Skinheads. Your supposition that the president relates to racism on a micro or marco level is simply illogical. It implies that somehow everyone who was vehemently against Obama (calling him an Arab and a Muslim as if these things were synonymous and/or slurs) simply shrugged and said, "Oh, guess I was wrong" on Nov 5. Clearly that didn't happen.

Obama won because he mobilized the minority vote while energizing the base. Palin's dead-cat-bounce in the polls and ensuing incompetency coupled with McCain's shaky handling of the economic breakdown discouraged right wing votes. Too, McCain never capitalized on the Evangelical vote that Bush Jr. used (and I do mean USED) so well.

I am a white, Jewish American. I don't own a single album from Wallace, or 2Pac or any of the other 4 hip-hop/rap artists you've ever heard of. I'm not some ditto-head offended that you insulted my idol. I am, however, clearly capable of much more rational thought than you are.

Just one question, does it hurt when your knuckles drag on the ground? Have you fashioned some type of gloves or have they just calloused over?

Here are my five favorite records, in no order.

Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen

Bat out of Hell by Meatloaf

Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails

In and Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

and

Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd

Of course, Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan really deserves to be on that list too...so, make it top 6 I guess.


What are your top 6?

It seems that every year there is a flare-up in Israel. Hamas, hezbollah, or some other party launches rockets at civilians and the Israeli Defense Force responds with tactical military strikes that result in heavy civilian casualties.

The entire situation is totally unacceptable. And the heaviest body count is always on the side of the Palestinians; often children suffer most. It would seem, on the surface, that Israel is acting as a militant state with vicious disregard for the sanctity of human life. But, as with almost everything in the Middle East, it’s a whole lot more complicated.

As you have no doubt seen, ultra-left leaning groups on campus, as well as Palestinian "liberation" clubs (who are actually right-wing reactionaries) have yet again decided to assault the student body with half-truths, emotional appeals and outright lies.

The Israeli people are not evil. And while many of their government's policies are abhorrent, such as the tendency to fly fighter jets at extremely low levels in order to shatter glass in Palestinian homes, Israel does carry the moral higher ground in this case. Unfortunately, fascist groups such as Hamas do everything in their power to tilt the discussion and make Israel look villainous.

But if you know a bit of history, most of the anti-Israel sentiment breaks down to what it really is; equivocation, logical fallacy, willfully flawed thinking, and all too often, anti-Jewish rhetoric.

First, a bit of history. Israel exists today because Harry S Truman, in his final days in office, pushed for U.S. support of the Israeli state, which had, until this point, been a fairly unpopular concept, Holocaust and all. At the same time, the Palestinian people were offered the land that today makes up Jordan. From the very beginning, it was a two state solution, with shared control of Jerusalem.

But, the five Arab nations surrounding Israel told the Palestinians instead to flee to refugee camps while they all attacked the new Jewish state on the day that it was officially founded. Obviously, Israel won that war, along with every war that followed. With time, the Israeli government gained strategic defensive outposts, including the Golan Heights.
    
In the meantime, the Arab nations that had once promised the Palestinians all of Israel now ignored the refugees and refused them citizenship. Consequently, the Palestinians remained trapped, people without a nation. This desperate situation galvanized the refugees and caused them to cling to their weapons and, often, violent interpretations of the Koran.

Israel long ago accepted the validity of a Palestinian state and has made great efforts to make peace. Former enemies like Egypt have also tried to help. Israel has even given back land that it won in defensive war. What other nation has ever done this? Furthermore, what other nation would be derided for not giving back "enough" land?

Israel is being held to a separate standard. Nations have their boarders formed as a result of wars. Why is Israel singled out as a protest target because of this? Frankly, any U.S. citizen who protests Israel's borders should be prepared to give his or her home back to the Native Americans.

Israel has suffered more bombing than Britain did during WWII. Britain responded by firebombing Dresden, killing 250,000 civilians. Israel is not disproportionately cruel; it is incredibly gentle by historical standards. Its military gives away tactical positions. It tells the enemy when and where they will be attacked. The military takes great care to avoid injuring Arab civilians, putting Israeli citizens at risk to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. So why all the so-called collateral damage?

Ever heard of a human shield?

Hamas kills Palestinian civilians, pure and simple. They launch rockets from schoolyards, hide terrorist leaders behind women and children, build houses around their weapons depots. The leadership does everything in its power to maximize collateral damage so that people who are not willing to look deeply will see only the body count and assume that it is Israel that is acting as the aggressor.

Israel is not the aggressor. Hamas disregards the Geneva Convention. They attack only civilians, and then hide behind children, daring Israel to defend itself. Yes, it is unacceptable for Israel to have created a blockade that traps Palestinians without food or medical care. But at the same time, it is very telling that Hamas seems to have plenty of funds for smuggling rockets, but none for smuggling food or medicine. And the Palestinian citizens continue to pay the price.

The worst part is, this is not even a conflict between Israel and Hamas. This, as with Vietnam, is a proxy war. It is a battle between forces led by the United States and forces led by Syria.

To blame Israel is to ignore the problem. It is easy to blame "the Jews" and co-opt terminology like "holocaust" "ghetto" and "pogrom" in attempts to prove a point. But is it counterproductive. If any of these groups protesting with chalk on campus sidewalks actually wanted peace, they would protest the crimes of Hamas along with the crimes of the Israeli Government. Their actions are anti-Semitic in the truest sense, as both sides are Semites. To blame only one is to be part of the problem. And if you choose to do so, it will be you who is to blame.

Like Strawberry Syrup

They shot him dead in the parking lot at Norms
What an undignified way to go.
The neon lights from the strip club across the way
Illuminating him
In ridiculous shades of pink, and purple

It wasn’t one of those pretty movie deaths
There was no sweeping music to carry him off to heaven
No dramatic crane shot
Not even a fade to black

No
Nothing like that

Just tightness in his chest
And a heavy feeling
Like he hadn’t slept in days

And then, his synapses began to shut down
As that last, great, serotonin rush began
And he hurtled away from this mortal coil.

As the neon tits flickered

Pink
Purple
Pink
Purple

I could see,
For just a moment at a time
His doggie bag.

The pancakes splayed out on the concrete
Right next to his insides
His blood looked like
Strawberry syrup.

Just got back from a 70mm screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Un-be-fuckin'-lievable. If you ever have a chance to see it in full 70mm glory, DO NOT MISS IT.

http://www.peta2.com/oUTTHERE/o-trentreznoripod.asp


So, weirdly, Trent Reznor's monotone voice works perfectly to create a gut wrenching experience watching this video. Wouldn't even buy fur at a thrift store now...

Amanda Palmer totally just blew me off. And here I am holding my dick after spending all afternoon editing my questions. Lamesauce.

So, I bought this old blue velvet jacket from Goodwill a while back. Think it cos me 12 bucks. Vintage looking thing with epic lapels. Cool thing, vaguely Asian too. I like the jacket and wear it around a lot, but yesterday, the top button came loose and fell off. I put it in my pocket so as not to lose it.

When I got home I reached into my pocket and found a concert ticket stub from...1978.

So, I'm going to be pitching to Fox in the next couple of weeks.

"The way things are"

As in, those with power and money don't have to fight because they can get poor schmucks to do it for them by diverting everyone's attention away with idiotic false flags like homosexuality, abortion, and flag burning? And then when said group of people go too far and destroy their own system they convince the same poor schmucks to pay what little money they have to prop up the corporate interests, (never mind the fact that these companies are already given special treatment that Joe Six Pack could never hope to get with his plumbing upstart), thereby destroying what little influence the schmucks have in world politics?

You literally have no idea what "tradition" is. You've been brainwashed by public schools and prime time TV. Here's a clue for you. After Prussia conquered most of the Germanic lands, Wilhelm II began to use the Brother's Grimm stories (and redacted versions thereof) to convince the children of the nation, who were taught to read with this book, that there was a common German-ness to them and a shared ancestry. There was not. There were many individual cultures. But, because the children didn't know history, they accepted these as truth then passed them on to the next generation. Thus, over a 35 year period an entire "ancient ancestry" was created. Then, after WWI, Adolf Hitler came along and continued the same tradition, expanding it and further altering the stories to create a "German-ness" in children which prided, "You are nothing! Your Volk is everything!" (folk=people, race, country). He raised an entire generation of children with the idea that Germany had "always" stood for self sacrificing serfs who were willing, ready and happy to lay down their lives for what they precieved as their "heritage" even though said heritage didn't even EXIST until the Rise of the Third Reich. 

And this, of course is not to compare America to Germany. Just to point out that it is excessively simple to create Jingoism. Conservatives don't stand for keeping things the way they have "always" been. Neo-Cons simply stand for trying to freeze the procession of time in a simulacra of a moment. That is to say, they want to freeze things the way they wish things to be, not as they are, or ever were. This is done with an extreme religious slant (here's another clue, the constitution's framers were Atheists, Deists, and cultists. The War was funded by a rich Jewish merchant. This is NOT a "Christian nation) for the purpose of reinforcing the aforementioned false flags and further concentrating power in the hands of the few.  

Of course, the Liberal v. Conservative structure of things in an even larger scale false flag as intelligent philosophical debate is all but impossible with a 2 party system. But that might not last if Sarah Palin really is the "new face of conservatism". That could be enough to push the conservo's who haven't drunk Rush Limbaugh's Kool-Aid into the ever growing Libertarian wing.

,Said the Shotgun to the Head--
Saul Williams

www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors

and stupid crap is giving me major panic attacks.

After meeting her briefly like 4 times over the years I finally have a chance to formally interview Amanda Palmer before her show on December 16th.

In order from Best...

Gaslight Anthem
Lil’ Wayne
MGMT
Amanda Palmer
Girl talk
The Streets
Owl City
Gnarls Barkley
Ingrid Michaelson
Nine Inch Nails
Matt Costa
Murs
Los Campesinos!
Ludo
A Rocket to the Moon
Dance Gavin Dance
The Gay Blades
TI

just wow. I'm pretty sure it's composite work because of the shadows, but STILL!

CITY OF EMBER IS THE BEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN, my girlfriend and I couldn't stop laughing throughout the last 20 minutes.

The movie is about a colony of people left underground for 200 years to survive a nuclear holocaust...or, something. At the end of 200 years, the people are supposed to come back above ground. Luckily, the future scientists have invented an incredibly efficient way of getting everyone back up to the surface.

First off, everyone has to leave through a 2 foot wide hole, hidden in the back of a building that no one ever goes in. Then, there are like 20 boats that carry 3 people max and these boats are not reusable. Also, it appears that the boards must ram into eachother before being launched off a cliff through a turbine (!?!?) and then down a 400 foot drop, for no particular reason. This is doubly odd, because you're trying to go UP. Not down, up. 

THEN you have to choose which way to steer the boat, while it goes 80 miles an hour down a steep incline. Following plunge to almost certain death, you must climb 10,000 stairs illuminated by a single candle.

Then you can, i donno, build a hut out of some sticks and eat some of your 200-year old canned food.

BRILLIANT!

Also, you're sorta back in the stone age now. So, you know, good luck that.

GREAT JOB, FUTURE.

New song on my myspace www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors cover of John Prine's classic, Sam Stone

It's sort of, "electro-beatnik"

So, I write a lot of poems about deconstructing masculinity. I just don't get this whole manly thing. I never have. Not to say I don't play into it on occasion, but even when I do, it just feels so silly and self destructive.

However, most of the poems I write don't make sense to their intended audience and instead make people feel like I'm just bragging about the size of my dick. And it's true, I do have lines like, "I've got a cock like Fellini / That's right, 8 1/2" But those things always struck me as clearly sarcastic and self effacing. But, this is not a good mode of attack.

So, I tried writing a new variant on the theme. and this came about

( Read more... )

Does it work?

So, I keep a collection of found art that I get from around my college. It's all stuff that is designed with utilitarian intent. The stuff is left out and damaged in the rain and becomes beautiful as it loses it's ability to serve it's original purpose.

Today I picked up one of the best pieces in my entire collection.

It's big poster against prop 8 that reads "40 YEARS FROM NOW THIS WILL BE REGARDED AS SHAMEFUL" in big green block letters.

It's now the only thing on the wall in my living room.

Barney the dinosaur just auditioned for my super-edgy (and for the time secret) short film. We also got auditions from 2 Daily Show corespondents.

So, last night I finally did it.

I finished my feature length screenplay. The first draft comes it at 108 pages. I spell checked it and sent it out to my mentor folks today. It took almost a total calender year to work it all out and finish it.

The script started as a short about 2 goth siblings hanging out at their father's funeral and making fun of his corpse. Then it grew into a fantastical dark coming of age comedy. It's got ghosts and necrophiliacs and incest and magic oujia boards and Haitian zombie rules and decapitations and Foucaultian self actualization. So, you know, it's a comedy.

A friend of mine who mentors me is reading it this weekend and will help me edit it come Monday. He's also been shopping it around and talking up the ideas to a few production houses. Normally I'd take all of that as general encouragement, but this guy has actually helped several students sell their work. Hell, he even directed one former student's script.

So, this is the part where things get interesting. My blog might be on the edge of actually being compelling.

So, a few days ago the Queens of the Stone Age sent out an email saying to check their message boards for an LA Surprise in the 28th. I look it up and it turns out that the band is playing a "secret" show with the Foo Fighters at The Avalon.

So, I entered to win tickets.

I wake up this morning to see a text message telling me I've won. I'm super happy for a moment (QotSA are one of my favorite acts and I've somehow managed to miss the Foo Fighters on every one of their tours).

Then 2 things hit me.

A: I have a midterm tomorrow morning at 11 AM. If I drive down to LA tonight, I have to drive back to SB at 1 AM.

B: It's only ONE TICKET so I can't get anyone to drive me because they wouldn't have a way in.

So now I feel worse than if I had just lost.

Oh well.

this journal is 4 years old today.

moontheloon68
2:06
thats what i said, corey
speaking of which
high school musical 3 was fantastic
by far the best one
and a fantastic way to end THE HOLY TRILOGY

Hunter Daniels
2:09
aha
saw v is worth a look

moontheloon68
2:09
ya im gonna check it out for sure
was it bloody?

Hunter Daniels
2:10
not as much as the other sequels
so, what is the next HSM gonna be called
Remedial School Musical

moontheloon68
2:10
i dont know how they're gonna make another one with a sensical story

Hunter Daniels
2:10
ahahahha

moontheloon68
2:10
cause the plots for HSM were usually rational and made sense

Hunter Daniels
2:10
because that's what the fans want
ahahahah

moontheloon68
2:11
now they're all off at college
on separate sides of the US
so i dont know what theyre gonna do

Hunter Daniels
2:11
umm
SUMMER BREAK
UMM
VISTING EUROPE
UMM

moontheloon68
2:11
they already did a summer break
that was hsm2

Hunter Daniels
2:11
HAVING THEM IN DIFFERNET PLACES BUT STILL, YOU KNOW, SINGING AND DANCING?

moontheloon68
2:11
fans wont go for that

Hunter Daniels
2:11
webcams?

moontheloon68
2:11
that would be awesome!
write it!

Hunter Daniels
2:12
michael, you're a weirdo
plot doesn't matter
the dancing does

moontheloon68
2:12
also the songs are fantastic

Hunter Daniels
2:12
okay, ill write it
but thefirst song has to be about anal sex

moontheloon68
2:12
and i'll choreograph

Hunter Daniels
2:12
and the song has to be called
this is a song about anal sex (and this should not be taken as a metaphor, but rather as a literal endorsment of the act, especially by minors)

moontheloon68
2:13
hahaha

Hunter Daniels
2:13
its a bit long
but it does come with the catchy acronym
TiaSAAS:AtSnbTaaMbRaaLeotaEbM

moontheloon68
2:14
hahaha

Hunter Daniels
2:15
but i mean
just say that outloud
it just rolls off the tongue

moontheloon68
2:17
it does!
sweet
i imported the new jobros cd on my itunes finally
dont why it took me soo ong to get it

Hunter Daniels
2:19
lol

moontheloon68
2:21
jobros have had an odd amount of staying power for a pop band
4 albums

Hunter Daniels
2:24
lol
2:29moontheloon68 disconnected

Michael: I hear that there's gonna be a Neutral Milk reunion tour soon.
Me: Really? I don't see it.
Michael: Yeah, because he's becoming less crazy now.
Me: Fair enough.

So, I finally got around to re-designing my LJ page.

It's much less garish now. And the background image even works.

Justin Rice answers the phone in a polite, unassuming voice. It’s not the kind of introduction you would expect from one of your favorite rock stars, instead, it’s more like calling a friend you haven’t spoken to in a few months.

But then, little is typical of Rice, the guitarist and co-songwriter who represent one half of Bishop Allen. Instead of the usual broken home, tortured adolescence shtick that makes up the biography of so many young musicians, Rice came from Harvard. Yes, that Harvard. And then he fell into rock music.

“I don’t know what [my intended career path] was,” said Rice. “I studied literature. Christian studied math. It wasn’t because we decided to be in a band. It was just something we always did. It was a really natural thing to do to just play in a band for the hell of it and eventually just take more and more time we woke up day and realized that’s what we’re doing.”

The band’s first record, the delight and effervescent “Charm School” was a real DIY endeavor.

“We record through a series of over-dubs,” Said Rice. “We don’t know what we want it to sound like. There is a lot of discovery that happens. There were parts on a ukulele that we put some reverb on and tried on a guitar. It has a mad scientist laboratory approach to it.”

The record met with great success, selling well and garnering mention in major magazines including Rollingstone. After touring finished the band began work of their second album. But then things got complicated.

“It stalled in a weird way,” Said Rice. “We couldn’t figure out how to finish songs. It just wasn’t coming together right”

For many months the band was unable to finish a single song, things looked dire until the band came across a broken piano outside of a local school. The discovery of this piano lead the duo to “The Ep Project” a year-long experiment where the band released a new 4-track Ep every month.

“Making the Ep’s was exactly what we needed,” said Rice. “We needed to have a lot more songs to choose from. It forced us to learn how to write a lot a lot a lot of songs.” […] “That entire year there was never a moment when I wasn’t writing a song. We just worked them consistently every day, long hours.”

As they began releasing the Ep’s Rice did some publicity.

“I had a list of bloggers and I would just send them a link and say hey, here’s a link., You can listen for free,” said Rice.

The project caught on like wildfire with the blogger community.

“We decided, it seems really dumb to me to not use the internet in this day and age,” said Rice. “It used to be that distribution and public Were controlled by a few people. Now you can distribute and publicize on your own. I think anyone who is not tacking advantage of that is stubborn. It’s pretty obviously important, to me.”

After they finished with the Ep’s the band signed with Dead Oceans to help them release their second official record, “The Broken String.”

“The Broken Sting” is a 12-song collection pulled from the band’s 12-part “Ep Project,” Instead of simply picking the most popular songs and making a “Best Of” compilation the band chose to rerecord and expand upon their previous arrangements.

“I think when you’re working on it you try things out,” said Rice. “You use your ears to pick the moments and hear the space to do something. A lot of it has to do with intuition.”

But all of this Web2.0 trickery would be useless were it not for solid song writing and catchy hooks. Fortunately, Bishop Allen has both in spades. While most of the songs are extremely entertaining and pop-y on a first listen, it is only after a few spins when the deeply felt literary lyrics begin to really sink in.

“I definitely read a lot more than I listen to music,” said Rice. “I read more voraciously. I listen to music a lot but reading books in general probably has more of an impact. Sometimes when you’re listening to music it’s hard to listen to other music. If im listening to music I don’t start making it up.

And Rice apparently hasn’t been listening to too much music lately because, with the discipline learned during the creation of their previous record and Ep set Bishop Allen is back in the studio, finishing up work on their as of yet untitled third studio album.

In the meantime you can get your Bishop Allen fix in the new Peter Sollett (Rasing Victor Vargas) film, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist where the band is featured prominently during the opening scenes.

Bishop Allen begins a US tour on November 1. Their third album is expected in store and online during the first quarter of 2009.

"Prop 8 protects our children from being taught about gay marriage in schools" Yes...and the 3/5ths compromise protects our children from being taught that niggers are people...so, what's your point?

http://www.amazon.com/Larry-Clark/dp/9071691454/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223865644&sr=8-5


or, if you're feeling very generous...

http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-lust-autobiography-Larry-Clark/dp/B00071ZLGA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223865710&sr=8-3

My school has a copy of that second book, you can look at on request, but you can't take it out of the room. It's one of the most profoundly moving things I've ever seen. The verisimilitude is unmatched. I could smell the sweat on the bodies, taste the vomit in the back of my throat. My eyes ached from the beauty. I wished they were bigger, if only so I could see more.

A must read along with the companion book, TULSA.

For the two of you wondering, yes, this is the same Larry Clark who did "KIDS" and "BULLY." He's a phenomenal director of unmatched grunge quality. I absolutely adore his work. But his films pale in comparison. This books is a masterpiece of visual language.

Little Tommy Whall
It seems to me that the core of the Tommy Whall issue is the perception of reality and the individual’s inability to comprehend the reality of any other person. Part of the problem is language. Language, for as useful as it is, is an extremely limited and inaccurate tool. If I say “spoon” you might think of a wooden tool for stirring sauce when I meant a small metal object with a black plastic handle. Even when I am more specific, the likelihood of us ever perceiving the same spoon is nil. In fact, the more specific I become in my description the less likely we are to reach an understanding because all I will have done is build up a larger wall of language.

Even if I show you the spoon in question, I have no way of knowing if we are seeing the same thing. What is to say that black to me is not pink to you? With this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that all knowledge is fluid and that literally everything is unknowable in the most basic sense.

So, what happens when we apply the inherent problems of language to something less corporeal than a spoon, say, “Justice?”

What we are left with is an inescapable quagmire. You know what justice means and I know what justice means, but do either of us have the capacity to comprehend what the other sees as justice? Moreover, does either of us have the willingness to look outside of our box of the self to even care? The Whall case is a testament to the fact that a majority of people cannot, and will not look for the abyss to stare back.

Because of this, we are left in a world with 6.8 billion definitions of justice all of which are incongruent. The organization of “faith” and religions is a system for dealing with this conundrum. It draws down the number of opposing ideas to a few dozen as opposed to billions. Still, each of these faiths is incompatible with the others even if they claim otherwise. Justice is an absolute and we live in a universe populated by grey. We can only discuss things in absolutes, but because of the inefficiencies of the meat machines that are our bodies, we can never know that which we seek.

So, I started a band.

I'm working on 2 concept records. One is called "Songs About Women I will Never Marry" and the other is called, "The Bitter End."

The Bitter End is a record made up of 2 instrumentals and 9 spoken word tracks. The first track is called, "Long is the Road and Hard is the way" it's the overture for the record. It's about 10 minutes long and contains most of the noises that make up the rest of the songs. It also tells the story of a man who is sick of life. In order to commit suicide he climbs up to the top of a building. The police show up and try and stop him, but they cannot. He jumps and falls to his death, then keeps on falling all the way down to the 9th layer of hell. When he wakes up in hell he decides to try and escape. He climbs through the layers of hell. Eventually Angels discover what he is doing and come to his rescue. They fight the Devil for possession of his soul. The angels win and he wakes up in heaven. However, heaven is just a mix of Earth and Hell so the man is even more frustrated. In a fit of despair the man climbs a spire in heaven moving up towards G-d as he is chased by angels. He reaches the top and before they can stop him, he jumps to his death. Then he wakes up back on earth.

After this, each of the 9 spoken word tracks is about a circle of hell. Each story is told from the perspective of a person describing his or her last moments on earth. (He Woke Up in A Hospital Bed is Suicide, A Trip to the Guillotine is Pagan).

Then, during the second instrumental, titled The Myth of Sisyphus, we discover that the whole thing has been a trick by the devil and that the man has been damned to hell, forced to live out this punishment on a mobius strip for all eternity.



then is also a sequel record called "A New Beginning" More on that Later. It's about champagne and the end of the universe.


www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors

thoughts?

I had an epiphany recently after reading old entries from this blog. I was miserable for years and years and every single moment of that time I was miserable was because of me. Not because of anyone else. I was fighting to make the universe bend to my will rather than looking for joy in the absurdity.

It hit me, all at once, as I was walking to class (late, as usual) and I have had great inner peace ever since.

People had told me this dozens of times, but it never made sense until it floated into my own mind. It was almost a religious experience.

New music I've been listening too

Los Campesinos
MGMT
Lil Wayne
The Gaslight Anthem
Amanda Palmer
Broken Social Scene*
Abandoned Pools
Aberdeen City
The Idiots
Bishop Allen
Asher Roth
Clothes Make the Man
CruiserWeight
Dance Gavin Dance
The Gay Blades
Eleven Minutes Away
Elvis Perkins
Girltalk
Hit the Lights
David Morphew
Lilly Allen (New record leaks have been great)
Ludo
Man Man
Natalie Portman's Shaved Head
Noah and the Whale
Owl City
Partyline
Perfect
Portugal the Man
The Promise Ring
The Ratchets
Say Anything (early demos only)
The Streets (New record is the best one yet)
Tom Waits
The 3tards

These are the bands I have recently discovered, or feel have good new material.

*Not new at all. Just never actually listened to the record. Ballad for a 17-Year Old Girl is friggin rad though.

Seems that Bryan is done with the band.

So, the Prime Minister of Georgia is apparently an Emo-Manboy who wears neo-pink to press conferences about being invaded by Russia.

So, have you ever had a panic attack?

I had a pretty bad one a few days ago. I just started freaking out at about 4 AM. No one was up, on one was there to talk to, to help me calm down. It was pretty bad. I was wondering why I had been feeling weird all day, and why my mother had sent me this very peculiar note about how she was really proud of me.

So, I start thinking, what's wrong? And I realize, it's been 2 years.

2 years ago on the 10th of August I had a cocked gun shoved in my mouth by a gang of Nazi Skinheads. I started to hallucinate a bit about how it could have gone differently.

I could have taken a bullet. I would have died on a Thursday night. Who the fuck dies on a Thursday? I mean, seriously? I figured, if they had shot me, they would have checked my pockets and seen that I wasn't lying. I had 92 cents. Then they would have run off/driven off. I wouldn't have died right away. I probably would have bled out on the sidewalk.

But I'd like to think that I would have gotten up and tried. I would have moved. In my dazed mental state I somehow came up with a number.

12

I think I would have crawled 12 feet towards the nearest house before i passed out. I'd like to think 12 is a good number. It's a respectable number. It's not a total failure.

But, I didn't die that night, and now I’m writing this.

You got one guy who looks like Saddam Hussein with an afro.

Another guy who looks like Tim Curry, circa CLUE.

The first hour is basically about thinking of crazy stuff to do to/involving a midget a dwarf.

A: Said dwarf shoots a grizzly bear with an arrow in order to save an 8-year old girl in ren-fair clothes because she thinks she can talk to it.

B: The dwarf is beaten and thrown in the ocean.

C: the dwarf swordfights an adolescent.

D: The dwarf appears to be in a gay relationship with a badger.

Also, it's of some note that there is no real narrative reason for the existence of this dwarf or his continued presence.

In between scenes, it appears that a small child decided to take some LSD because she has some crazy hallucinations. Later, she has an acid flashback and sees a magic lion.

When the jesus/lion/icon shows up someone actually asks him about his omnipotence and he deflects the question and the responsibility for 10,000s of deaths and hundreds of years of slavery with, "nothing can happen the same way twice" as if this answers anything.

Then, the lion roars and makes a sea monster which sorta kicks ass. Then, in the end, the lion affirms his his omnipotence through choosing to regrow a talking mouse's tail, (as a reward for slitting so many throats on screen?), instead of ressurecting the dead or helping someone who was maimed in a significant way.

Also, the mouse is voiced by Eddie Izzard and it seems like he might still be a transvestite based upon the effeminate feather on his head.

Also, the first faux-climax devolves into a mix of Rocky and Hamlet, even though the movie had, until this point, been content to rip off MacBeth.

And then, it seems like this movie is sort of about how awesome and righteous the Crusades were...but I can't tell because the various Christian metaphors were way too convoluted. The film is like one, giant, half-literate mixed metaphor.

AWESOME.

UPDATE: Also, even though the movie is a period piece, it ends with a deliciously subversive and modern sounding song from Jewish Anti-Folk artist Regina Spektor.

Wow...just wow.

So, last night, I was reading over some of my older LJ posts and, I am literally disgusted with my previous behavior. Somehow I had managed to idealize some of this time and forget some of the fuckin' weird, stupid, dumb things I did. I am just...I almost want to delete all of this out of shame.

I don't have contact info for most of the people, and I'm not going to be stupid enough to post a whole bunch of names on here again. Just know that, if I met the me from 2005, I would probably want to kick his ass more than all of you guys did.

I am seriously, sincerely sorry.

they tried to kill me, but I'm still standing. Looking back, I didn't realize how fucked up that whole thing was until much later. I'm just realizing how odd my life has been.

Glad to be alive.

I've also been at SB for 1 year now.