Inspired Art -- Photo of the Week 11 Jan 2010

There's some amazing art at Gallery 1988. Right now they're prepping for a He-Man centered show, but early last year they had a Beastie Boys-inspired show. So while they're technically not "photos," here are a couple of the favorites that I saw (from here).

The Beasties from Ill Communication ("Sabotage") arrest the Beasties from License to Ill:

And another "Sabotage" one:

I'm a huge fan. But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.



It's a short one today, but I have a work inbox to dig out of. Tomorrow's should be better, so check back. Happy Monday!

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A Vinyl Gift -- Photo(s) of the Week 28 Sept 2009

J Mill presented me with an amazing gift the other day:

A Scorpions Live Tour Double Album...on vinyl! The only way it could be more butt rock is if it came with some sleazy groupies and some sort of STD.

Oh, wait. There's a back?!

The crowd-point (left guitarist) and fist-pump (right guitarist)...Amazing.

But you want to know who's most excited to be in the band? This guy:


Happy Monday. It's gonna be a good week.

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The Perm -- Photo of the Week 13 July 2009

This week's is a doozy. The wager finally came to fruition.


The reactions have ranged all across the spectrum: Lots of doubletakes (myself in the mirror in the morning; everybody at church); extreme dread and anxiety, like a parent sending their child to their first day of school (AM before seeing the perm); semi-relief and a "it's not as bad as it could have been" (AM after seeing the perm); incapable of looking at me without laughing uncontrollably (Midge); rending of clothing, refusal to be comforted, and desperate beseeching to PLEASE cut my hair ('manders); disappointed headshaking, like I had been convicted and sentenced to do 10-15 in the State Pen (Josh M); backhanded comment about no longer possessing self-respect (DJA); "John Lennon called...he wants his hair back...No, seriously though: Get a haircut." (Banker); being told I should host a Japanese game show (Chunk). That's just the tip of the iceberg.

I'll tell you the worst part, though. My hair reeked like moldy butt. Seriously.

Anyway, I considered growing a mustache and going for an Adam Morrison-type look, but I would have needed to be ten times uglier, twenty times creepier, and willing to flush my social life down the drain. I still can't believe this guy has an NBA championship ring:



Happy Monday, everyone. Be grateful your coworkers have at least an ounce of respect for you. Mine may have at some point. But won't. Ever.

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Anvil, the Story of Anvil

Josh M found a documentary, Anvil, The Story of Anvil, about a butt rock band from the 80s that -- although admired by its more commercially successful peers and successors -- never quite struck gold themselves. (Unless, of course, you consider playing in European bars to a crowd of 2-15 people, 20 years past your prime, "striking gold.")

It is simultaneously sad and unintentionally hilarious. Like This is Spinal Tap. But disturbingly real.

Anyway. I figured most people dress up for movies they're excited about -- Transformers, Harry Potter, X-Men (I saw a kid at X3 tape butter knives to his hands to be Wolverine claws once. I think I focused more on him during the movie, just to see if he would accidentally gouge himself in the face when trying to eat a sourpatch kid. Wow.) So I capitalized on the opportunity and we dressed accordingly. The sad thing is that we were the only ones.

This first one has me and DJA looking to our shirts for guidance on what a good group photo should look like. Let's see if you can identify the reluctant participant in our adventure:


And the group photo we settled on:


Some critiques of our dressing up: Our unacceptably short hair; I should have photoshopped out Josh M's glasses. He looks much too intelligent; Banker looks even more depressed than the usual drugged-out hair metal band member. That's all I can think of right now.

Also, some encouraging comments made on Facebook after the posting of these photos:

I can't believe you have spread the BR madness to the East coast now.

Seriously--I cannot believe you still own that frickin' shirt.

Gee, thanks for your continued support, everyone. It's what keeps me going.

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Average Homeboy

Brother-in-law Ben sent this to me a while back. Only a I've-been-standing-in-line-for-hours-screaming-giddily-for-the-Twilight-movie-opening caliber lapse of judgement stopped me from posting it earlier. I don't know what I was thinking.

One word. Three syllables. A-MA-ZING:



Some comments from friends/family so far:

I can't believe I just spent 4 and a half minutes watching that. Unbelievable mullet...I really don't know what to say...

i just got blazed, and I loved it.

I couldn't finish it. it makes me feel bad for being alive

I like to go out and shoot some hoops
but not before I eat my fruit loops

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A Temporary Revival

It's confession time.

Back in my high school days, my friends and I became enamored with butt rock. It all started when we were at Goodwill shopping for some props for a History class skit. We found some old butt rock concert t-shirts for $0.99 (Def Leppard and Judas Priest were the originals). They were threadbare black tshirts, pictured men with leather pants, big hair, and triangular guitars. We bought them and spent the next two years collecting all the shirts we could find, and, even as a joke, listened to the bands' music...

"Why in the *$@# would you do that??" is a perfectly valid -- albeit a little obscene -- question. It wasn't because we actually liked it, or thought they were talented. I think it's for the same reason that shows like "Ripley's Believe it or Not," or people like that less-than-no-talent Asian guy that appeared on "American Idol" a few years back got famous. It was pure fascination that this genre of music, not to mention the associated culture and lifestyle, dominated the music scene and actually sold albums for a decade.

Did it get to the point where I ordered the "Power Ballads" collection from those infomercials?...almost. But high school ended, and butt rock was left by the wayside, neglected and forgotten...and rightfully so.

Until just recently. This past week I got invited to go to an 80's cover band concert: The Legwarmers. My initial motivation was to people-watch -- these kind of activities, much like medieval gatherings, have the tendency to bring the freaks out of the woodwork -- but as the band started playing, a distant echo from high school came back to me. I think it started when they played "99 Red Balloons", Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" (repressed memories of TME shaking his thang in a towel came flashing back), moved to "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC, then topped it off with that Def Leppard classic: "Pour Some Sugar on Me."

Some other highlights: The drummer coming out in a full Storm Trooper uniform, helmet and all, and playing for a good full hour before he took it off; the keyboardist with wispy blonde hair, wind-swept by a conveniently placed fan under her keyboard; the groupies at the front of the crowd looking to sleep with any band member they could get their hands on.

The concert was great. Do I wish the 80s returned? Hell no. In fact, I'm glad that I was too young to remember any of it. But it sure is fun to have a short, temporary revival every once in a while. Special emphasis on short. And temporary.

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Movie Review: "Transformers" at IMAX

That's right. You read the title correctly, and you'd better believe I'm gonna go there.

I decided this past Saturday that I needed a respite from my rigorous college-football-watching schedule and went with a bunch of guy friends to check out "Transformers" on IMAX. Something about throwback movies based on favorite childhood cartoons brings guys together. I can't explain it.

It's cliched, I know, but I guess in some ways we're all still children at heart, and "Transformers" has this inexplicable way of being almost generationally defining -- not in the sense that Vietnam defined a generation...please, I'm not stupid enough to make that poor of an analogy -- in the sense that if the Transformers cartoon gets brought up in a conversation, all guys in the group who watched it as a kid automatically belong to an unspoken brotherhood. Or how about the one kid in intermediate school who inevitably wrote his "My Hero" report on Optimus Prime.

Anyway. Transformers. Important to my generation. Not the point of this entry.

I like to think as I've gotten older and supposedly more mature (that's debatable), I've come to enjoy movies for any of the following reasons: good humor, good dialogue, character development, intricate plot lines, the ability to engage me emotionally...and sure, maybe even the chance to sit around afterwards and talk about it with friends and family.

"Transformers" had none of these, yet I still enjoyed it, because I got exactly what I expected when I walked in: poor dialogue, cheesy lines, zero character development (I walked out of the theater wondering why they couldn't have at least delved into the hidden complexities of Starscream's brooding character a bit more), a plot line that had me continually asking "Wait, couldn't they just have...?" and "How were they able to...?", and characters that could have all died and I could have cared less, with the exception of Optimus Prime. It was 2+ hours of action, explosions, car chases, and CG robots duking it out, and it was awesome. Don't think we weren't cheering periodically throughout the movie. That's really all there was to it.

More than meets the eye? Not even close.

But that's not why I went.

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Grade School Lunch - Status Symbols Start Early

Growing up and going to grade school, how many of us brought our lunches from home? And how many of us were jealous of those kids that always had Kudos Bars as the sort of 'dessert' portion of their lunch? You know, those bars that were disguised as semi-healthy granola bars, but were really the M&M / Mars Corp. pre-cursor "gateway" candy bar to future chocolate addiction? Hopefully some of you are nodding your head in agreement right now, or else this entry will be completely worthless.

(Funny anecdote. The day after an 8th grade basketball game we were sitting at practice, and our coach said "Kudos to Chris for grabbing 14 rebounds yesterday." Chris couldn't make practice for some reason, so the next day my buddy Alex and I saw him and Alex said "Dude, Chris. Coach Sotka said he was going to give you a kudos bar for grabbing 14 boards in the game yesterday!")

My parenthetical stories aside, did you ever notice how Kudos bars just kept getting smaller and smaller each year? They started out the size of a candy bar, but they kept getting shorter until they became equivalent to a Fun Size candy bar. How pathetic is that of Mars? I guess I shouldn't blame the company...that extra 2 or 3 inches of artificial, synthetic chocolate that they pump out by the ton must be costly.

While I'm talking about grade school lunches... I remember being jealous of the kids that had, in addition to the Kudos Bar, the Lunchables and Squeeze-its. The cool kids always seemed to have them. I guess what you brought for lunch served as the status symbols in grade school. But I guess in retrospect I'm okay with my parents having avoided paying extra money for a shrinking pseudo-candy bar, 6 oz of flavored sugar water, and processed meat and cheese with enough cholesterol to clog my little 10-year old arteries just so that I could fit in.

Hmmm. Empty calories and no sense of real fulfillment. I guess the status symbols of childhood really aren't so different from those of adulthood.

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