January 2012
6 posts
This tumblr
is now officially reserved for long text posts, i.e. the kind of thing people used to read before the internet.
I started another one that’s more conventional:
http://turdparty.tumblr.com
“Indie rock is the greatest threat to Western Civilization since the bubonic...”
– Jim Goad (via milf-island)
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Lunar truth: Apollo 18.
In space, no one the Department of Defense can hear you scream.
On Rotten Tomatoes, APOLLO 18 currently holds a rating of 25%. But the film is far from the cinematic misfire that such a score might suggest; instead its low marks prove, yet again, that when it comes to horror movies, mainstream film critics are often as trustworthy as Rutger Hauer’s murderous drifter in THE HITCHER.
Like...
Overlooked: 97a.
Being ahead of your time sucks. If you’re lucky, posterity will remember you fondly, but chances are that while you’re around, you’re just going to be ignored by posers going crazy over bullshit that will seem terrible in retrospect. Case study: 97a.
Formed in New Jersey in 1993, 97a played the kind of fast, no-bullshit hardcore that would come into serious vogue right around...
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December 2011
48 posts
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Best records of 2011.
10. Shoppers - Goodbye to All That (honorable mention: Silver Year)
I hate to be that guy, but the demo totally destroys the LP. The album is pretty good, but the recording on the demo suits the songs much better than the more blown out sound of the full-length. Plus, the demo has a way more definitive version of the best song on the LP—you know, the one with the line “hold me down...
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“In 1980 we hated the jocks and the jocks hated us. Everybody hated us, and they...”
– John Hodges, the guitarist from Hated Youth.
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The Kiss. →
Anatomy of a riot, and a photograph.
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City in a bottle. →
How a Russian filmmaker recreated Stalinism in a surreal Foucauldian labyrinth in the Ukraine. One of the best stories I’ve read all year.
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10 favorite punk names.
I’m probably forgetting a ton of awesome ones that I’ll remember later, but here goes.
10. 10,000 Marbles (Fucked Up)
Certainly not the funniest or grossest punk name, but one that fits perfectly. 10,000 Marbles and his music are a lot like his pseudonym, especially during the time when he was actually using it: offbeat, evocative, and—dare I say—mysterious....
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Emo Diaries, vol. 2: A million titles away.
When I was 15 and first starting to regularly go see bands in basements and art galleries, the emo aesthetic was still king. In comparison to the emo of the early ’90s (i.e. guys with bowl cuts screaming about destroying capitalism), this was a highly developed strain, as the “Spock rock” look had become deeply entrenched.
But it was still paleo-emo compared to today’s...
Emo Diaries, vol. 1: What's Mike Kirsch's is...
The meaning of the word “emo” has slipped and slid so dramatically over the years that trying to trace the path of its devolution would make Jacques Derrida throw up. Once a byword for a kinder, gentler Minor Threat, it came to encompass everything from crypto-hippy Simon & Garfunkel fans (The Hated) to Romulan art school casualties (Antioch Arrow + thousands of others), before...
Demonstrating my Eurostile.
I’m not a huge font/typeface guy, but I’ve noticed that Eurostile bold extended (or Microgramma, which it was based on and was designed by the same guy) turns up in just about everything that I love (just look at the header to this blog). Aside from the fact that it’s a rad font, this is probably due to the fact that it’s most frequently used in sci-fi movies or on punk...
The problem with everything: requiem for a Pantera...
To recap: music is now freely available pretty much everywhere, pretty much all the time. And there’s nothing wrong with this, exactly: when Joe Carducci was at SST, he would’ve killed to have this kind of distribution. That’s the good, democratizing part: starting a band and getting your music to people is easier than ever, even if making a living off of it is getting trickier...
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Accepting Chuck Klosterman into your heart.
For a long time, I hated Chuck Klosterman. I hated what I saw as precious, pretend iconoclasm, wrapped in a condescending fauxletarianism. I hated the spectacle of the consummate hipster purporting to be such a regular guy, delivering a righteous sermon about the evils of our slide into Irony while perched atop an enormous edifice constructed entirely of Irony.
But I have realized the error of...
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Only just realized
that the huge strongman Santa in the execrable Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas feature Jingle All the Way is The Big Show.
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We're sick of music and we hate each other.
At the top of my want list: the Please No Profanity benefit compilation, which features both the first recorded appearance of In/Humanity and a song by Hootie and the Blowfish.
For more on the uncanny connection between these two titans of modern music, consult Chris Bickel’s classic column about peeing on Hootie’s soap. (Originally published in either MRR or HeartattaCk, naturally.)
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Three at Last →
Great, biting article from Sean Flynn (GQ) on the sudden and surprising release of the West Memphis Three.
All they had to do was confess to a crime they didn’t commit, 18 years after the state of Arkansas “sent three teenagers to prison on little more than a well-told campfire story.”
[Jason] swears he’s not bitter. “I burnt out of angriness a long time...
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Hat Guy, because he does hat things.
The best part of the WWE Wrestling’s Highest Flyers DVD: the first match—between Ricky Steamboat and Brian Pillman at the 1992 WCW Halloween Havoc in Philadelphia—naturally features “Hat Guy” of ECW fame in the front row, in pretty much the exact same spot you see him in all of the bingo hall matches.
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The Cult of Jurassic Park. →
Hold on to your butts.
Every Steven Soderbergh movie. →
Not a torrent, requires reading. BUMMER DUDES.
As a completist myself, I love Slate’s The Completist series, where somebody watches every single film by a director and tells you what they learned. It’s the best kind of criticism: the kind that reminds you why you liked something in the first place, and makes you want to revisit it again.
Dan Kois’ ranking of all of the...
Sabu's boots on eBay. →
Dear Santa.
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“Work, then, institutionalizes homicide as a way of life. People think the...”
– Bob Black, from his classic essay “The Abolition of Work.”
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