Dengue Fever

So this is pretty sweet: Dengue Fever

I wasn't aware of this band until a couple of days ago when their new album came out. I found the descriptive sticker quite interesting and gave it a listen, and enjoyed it immensely.

The band has a sound that I especially like. They use a Farfisa organ and play their guitars with a lot reverb and tremolo that is reminiscent of 60's surf bands (which I love).

I've been noticing a trend in indie/alternative music towards reverby guitar sounds (Beach House, Band of Horses, etc...), but it's rare to for a contemporary band to go so surfy.

An ideal set up for this sound is a vintage tube amp with spring reverb and a fender single-coil guitar like the jaguar, mustang or jazzmaster. That's why I bought my guitar (a jaguar baritone custom, which makes it even cooler than a regular jaguar):



I also have a silvertone 1484 tube amp from the 60's that is renowned for its spring reverb. Unfortunately it needs some repairs, and I don't have a speaker cabinet to go with it. But when I get that fixed it's going to sound amazing. Especially when I split the signal and use my bass amp to accentuate the bass frequencies, while using the silvertone for mids and treble.

Then all I'll have to do is learn to play before the trend gets old, and I'll be famous.

My day

Today has been a real winner...

Usually Wednesdays are nice because I usually only have to work from 1-6, but today was special. I knew coming in that it would be a longer day because I was scheduled to shoot a video at 5, which takes about an hour, then edit and publish the video, and finish up the usual work, so I expected to get out around 9 and have time to go home and make dinner, and maybe have time to read a book or something. Then this happened - Truck Fire


And now I smell like burnt garbage.

And still had to go do this - Big Brother Auditions

Which brings me to my point: What the hell is wrong with these people?

I can empathize with the desire to be famous and everything, but reality tv? Do they really think this is how they're going to make it huge? Starring on Big Brother 10?

How many Big Brother 'stars' can you name from the first 9 seasons? They've all really taken off haven't they. And everyone else that's ever been on a reality show is really huge now too.

Why not try developing a skill? Maybe you can earn some respect and admiration for your talent, insight and worth as a decent human being.

Or you can become a famous idiot-douchebag that's famous for being an idiot-douchebag.

Movie idea

This isn't especially well developed in my mind just yet, but here's the gist:

It's a series of short episodes. Each episode is a modern retelling of familiar stories from the bible. Specifically the stories that put women in a bad light, i.e. Delilah, Eve, Mary Magdalene, the Queen of Sheeba, Salome, etc...

And here's the twist: Each story puts the female character's motives and actions in a more positive light, and all the settings are contemporary (places and problems).

I got the idea from Regina Spektor's song 'Samson' which I like a lot for some reason.

I haven't worked out any details of any of these stories just yet so suggestions might be helpful. However I do have a title: 'An Exultation of Doves' (that's what you call a group of doves by the way, like a gaggle of geese, and the imagery is self explanatory... pretty clever I know)

Feminists will probably go for it, and if it's cast with lots of really good looking women it could have some mass appeal.

Sundance film festival

Well, I had intended to post a blog or two about my trip to the Sundance Film Festival while I was there. Unfortunately my parents don't have internet access in their condo, so that was out. Then when I got back home my internet went out for a week, so no blogging could be done. But in the month and a half since then I've just been really lazy.

So since I'm at work, and I'm bored, here's a blog. (I saw a lot of movies, but will talk about those later maybe)

I've been to Park City a few times for skiing, and visiting my parents who have a second home there, but I had never been during the festival. Park City is a tiny town compared to modern mid-west metropolises. It is segregated into two parts that sort of twist around the mountains. The main downtown area is like every other ski-resort type town, basically a main street with trinket and souvenir shops (actually Park City has a much higher density of bars and night clubs on Main Street than any other ski town i've been to) and some auxillary side streets with crappy little houses.

With the festival in town, the streets and parking lots overflow with way too many people. It is exactly like that episode of South Park when Robert Redford moves the festival to South Park and incurs the wrath of Mr. Hankey.

I decided to volunteer for the festival in order to get some free stuff, including movie passes for every 4 hour shift that I worked. The whole experience was a blast and I can't wait to do it again next year.

The following is a brief list of some of my experiences.

On the first day I was there, I saw a movie in the morning and had some time to kill before my volunteer shift. So I took the bus down to main street so I could walk around and maybe see some celebrities. And as I was riding the bus I was thinking about what celebrities I might see and how I might react to them. I thought to myself "If I see Jared Leto I'm going to kick him in the nuts." Not ten minutes later, as I stood on the corner smoking a cigarette, who should come walking down the opposite sidewalk but Jared Leto. I decided not to run across the street and kick him because I didn't want to go to jail on my first day.

On another day after lingering around Main Street, I went to the bus stop to go to my shift and noticed an incredibly good looking young woman waiting for a bus. So I decided to get on that bus too. We made eye contact, she smiled, I struck up a little generic, touristy conversation. It turns out she has a sexy english accent, her parents are both Saudi Arabian (which explains the raven hair, big brown eyes, and sweet chocalate complexion), she's a professional ski instructor, and she's going to see a specific movie later. What a coincidence that I was going to that same movie! (Of course I hadn't actually had any intention to see that movie because it looked really stupid. I was actually planning to go see Patti Smith play in an intimate venue for festival volunteers only.) So, I go to the movie, I "accidentally" run into Sophie (she had a french name too) and her british friend, I sit down in the row in front of them so not to be too creepy, and start up another little conversation as we waited for the movie to start. It's going ok, I found out a little more about Sophie, like that she's mad at her overbearing boyfriend for being a jerk about her going to see so many movies without him, when all of a sudden who should sit down right behind her but Quentin Tarantino. Needless to say, I was quickly phased out of the conversation. Then the movie started. and long story short, I spent the rest o f the week alone.

On the last night of the festival I was waiting in line for a movie when someone bumped into me. It was Maria Bello, it was pretty sweet.

While walking down Main Street I "accidentally" bumped into Ian Zeiring(sp), or perhaps better known as Steve from Beverly Hills 90210.

Other celebrities I saw:
Woody Harrelson, Alan Alda, Sarah Jessica Parker, Virginia and Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Ben Kingsley, Matthew Broderick, Ray Romano, one of the guys from Nip/Tuck, David Wain from The State, Leonor Varela, Sandra Oh, and others who I can't at the moment remember.

Good times.

Media Musings with Jake Davison

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9245.html

I can't believe this article missed the most important, insightful, activism inspiring protest song of the intra-Vietnam/Iraq era. I am talking, of course, about "Panama" from Van Halen's "1984" (George Orwell tribute) album. Van Halen was proved right during operation Just Cause in 1989 when Miguel Noriega was overthrown. Like many Hollywood liberal elitists, David Lee Roth was opposed to Reagan's support of the Contra's in Nicaragua.

Roth's deep and sober study of if international affairs led him to believe that the nation of Panama would be the next target of American Imperialism. In order to garner cross over appeal, Roth used various metaphors that came across as merely crass double entendres. Roth's imagery of cars ("power steerin', pistons poppin', ain't no stoppin now!") clearly represents the American War machine while "model citizen, zero discipline" was often said to be the perfect description of Reagan's popularity with the unwashed masses despite the Gipper's reckless, Soviet-challenging foreign policy.

This followed the general theme of the 1984 album, which criticized Reagan's "Jump" into the "House of Pain" that was Sandinista controlled Nicaragua, all the while underfunding priorities such as education ("Hot For Teacher") and the growing influence of James Baker ("Top Jimmy"). *Editor's Note: This posting is exactly as plausible as the idea that the Iraq protest songs are failing to sell do to anything other than the fact that the market for American popular music is flooded with tunes people ACTUALLY WANT TO LISTEN TOO.

Fred Schneider would be annoying to hang out with

So I am listening to the new B-52s album at work. I am not going to comment one way or the other on how I feel about the album. It sounds like the B-52s, later era B-52s. While listening to it a co-worker asked what exactly Fred Schneider does. I mean it isn't singing really, more vocal musings. It is like he is a walking talking gay pride float. He is a pop-culture word crossbow. His stylings are definately one of the key components that give the band its kitsch appeal, but what about in the rest of his life?

Can you imagine how loud he must be at the bar when he gets a couple bumps and a few cosmopolitans in him. jesus.

my first episode of The Hills

The Hills is a long running show on MTV. It follows some wealthy twenty-somethings as they attempt to figure out love and life. The show is supposed to be doocumentaryish with the supposedly real dialogue and action. Clearly, there is a great deal of staging and writing that goes into it, but the veil of reality really does give the show a certain voyeuristic charm. I am not totally unfamiliar with this type of show, the Hills is actually a spin-off show of Laguna Beach, which I saw a few times.

While the show is supposed to show the real lives of the main characters, I can tell from exactly one episode that there is a very strict formula here that i would guess the show almost never deviates from. I will give a run down of the characters I saw in this episode, what they did in the episode, and also what their roles in the show are.

1) Lauren, the vapid main character on the show, will inevitably create the drama/conflict that must be overcome for the show to move forward. In this episode she had two story lines. The first being that shortly after arriving in Paris to work on a project for teen Vogue, she discovers that her newly acquired boyfriend back home is referring to some other girl as his girlfriend. Feeling jilted, she decides that she needs a rebound while in Paris to make herself feel better. Enter tv-pretty french guy who apparently is in some un-named band(though since this show is on mtv, and mtv is in the business of promoting and selling music, it was suspicious that they never revealed who the band was. My answer to this is that they weren't a real band at all, but merely actors/models hired to play role on show.) Lauren has her rebound. Second story line, Lauren, while pursuing her rebound, realizes that she hasn't packed the right attire for wooing french hipster rebound, and needs to alter the presumably priceless ball gown she has on loan for her teen vogue event. She promptly ruins the dress, and relies, as people like her do in real life, on everyone around her to fix her dilemma she created through her own selfish pursuit of rebound.

2) Whitney, the ever faithful sidekick to Lauren, is on the show to clean up Lauren's messes while simultaneously never pursuing her own gory. Whitney, despite being smarter and more responsible than Lauren, as well as being just as cute in a subtler way, doesn't have the necessary star quality to make people want to clean up her messes. Because of this cursed invisibility factor, she is the born sidekick. We care about her the most and root for her on the show, but god forbid she ever set out on her own, which will only lead to failed attempt at being a Lauren, and will inevitably end in failure and loneliness, and a crawlback to Lauren to resume her role as sidekick. This dynamic of the show is a good reflection of reality I think. The world has roles, friendships have a dynamic to them. Once the dynamic is established things can never change.

3) Spencer and Heidi are the classic troubled couple. Terrible for each other, but somehow they cannot break-up. In a scene that seemed to define the relationship Heidi is trying to break-up with Spencer while at dinner in a restaurant. Spencer, not to be outdone, threatens that if she continues with this type of talk she would find herself single. It was the most asinine thing i had ever heard in my life. What was amazing was that this strategy worked. Heidi, who had been adamant that she wanted him to move out and get away from her, suddenly was back in baby's arms. I wonder if he beats her.