This album by Japan, Adolescent Sex, is a pretty good post- punk record. Imagine New York Dolls with way more keyboards. As always here's some links to songs of theirs, but I'd like to point out that we'll now get the most unintentional search result hits since Laurie posted that review of a picture of preteen boys wearing tight pants. In conclusion, welcome, perverts!
Moon is a pretty good movie in the subgenre I just made up called "Space Crazy Movies." Those are movies that take place in space (or deep in the ocean, like The Abyss), and feature one or more characters going crazy OR ARE THEY? Also, like 2001, Sunshine, Solaris, and RocketMan starring Harlan Williams. The plot is Sam Rockwell is mining for moon rocks alone and then starts going crazy OR DOES HE?
I'm not sure if it qualifies as a genre unto itself, but I love semi-serious autobiographies written by comedians. The first one I can remember reading was Drew Carey's Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined, which alternated between dick jokes and dark, personal anecdotes. Sarah Silverman devotes a large chunk of her book to her family history, her early battles with depression, and her bed wetting issues (hence the title). There's not a whole lot in the book about her comedy career, though she does take time to discuss some of her more controversial jokes/performances and there is a chapter devoted to her TV show, The Sarah Silverman Program. David Cross' book (I Drink For A Reason) could have been much better had it been written in a similar fashion.
A Beer For Every State #8 - New York
I'm no expert on the works on Charles Bukowski, but Post Office is the the third Bukowski novel that I've read in the last two years. I started reading his novels (I'm not too interested in his poetry) after I had read something on the internets that suggested that Chuck Palahniuk's fans wouldn't know a good book if it bit them on the ass so they should pick up Bukowski's Ham on Rye. Seeing as I couldn't stand the Palahniuk novel I was reading at the time, that sounded like a pretty good idea. Post Office is Bukowski's first novel to feature his semi-autobiographical stand-in Henry Chinaski, though it focuses on a period of his life that comes after the events of later novels such as Ham on Rye and Factotum. I'll avoid ending this review with any hyperbolic praise for Bukowski, as most of his fans are wont to do, all I'll say is that there is already another Bukowski title lined up on my Amazon wish list.
Eating the Dinosaur is a collection of essays written by Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman is an author who's work I had been more or less avoiding for the last few years. His name always seemed to pop up in articles and on websites that I liked, but I always found the praise of his work to be a bit fawning and his responses in interviews to be a bit off-putting (which sorta comes up in one of the book's first essays). Though, in the end, I quite enjoyed the book and found his essays both entertaining and interesting (even the ones about sports). Topics discussed in the book include: journalism, the similarities between Kurt Cobain and David Koresh, basketball, voyeurism, time travel, Garth Brooks' alter ego Chris Gaines, football, ABBA, laugh tracks, Pepsi's advertising strategies, irony, literalism, the lyrics of Rivers Cuomo, and a critique of the Unabomber Manifesto. 
#23 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List
This storyline starts with a support group meeting in a church basement to help people whose lives have been affected by Daredevil in some way. Eventually, it turns out one of them has a demon baby living inside of him, and thJESUS I'VE NEVER EVEN READ THE ILIAD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE???
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It only took twenty-three years, but they finally made a decent sequel to Predator. Predators goes out of its way to make you remember just how awesome the first Predator movie was by recycling some of the original film's score and by putting the Predators back in a jungle setting. Despite the occasional pause for some exposition, the movie keeps up a good pace, moving from one action scene to the next. The special effects are good, with lots of 'splosions and minimal crappy CGI. The performances from the human characters are also uniformly good, even That '70s Show's Topher Grace (no, really).
This is a pretty awesome homage/parody of 1970s blaxploitation films that came out (briefly) in theaters last year. It so closely matches the style of a lot of those films, including intentional production mistakes and degraded film stock, that I felt if I didn't know it was just made and couldn't recognize actors from today in it I would have just figured it was made back then. The only real giveaway is that Michael Jai White, who plays Black Dynamite, has like 7 black belts and is pretty great in all of the fight scenes, unlike Rudy Ray Moore, who clearly had little to no athletic ability. I'd tell you the plot, but that seems like work so just rent it or watch it on Netflix Watch Instantly (paid advertisement).
I've found that a lot of radio pop lately has been employing common late 90s electronic music moves that I would have loved back when I tracked, which is cool but also embarrassing because if I pick somebody up in my car and I'm blasting this or Nelly Furtado it's tough to come up with excuses. Well, as for La Roux, the 80s-style synthpop and charming androgyny of this group is extremely catchy. That's my excuse? Um.
Since the mid 80s, Lex Luthor had been redesigned as a rich megalomaniac who would rather manipulate things through use of business savvy and politics than by putting on a ridiculous green suit of armor and punching his way to satisfaction. In the early 2000s, DC Comics even had him elected president of the United States, and the comparisons between Luthor and another dubiously elected president were unmistakable. I MEAN GEORGE W. BUSH GET IT? Anyway, in case you aren't somebody who thinks W. is analogous to a supercriminal, then you're in luck, because archconservative Jeph Loeb undid all of that in six issues and had Luthor back in his idiotic green armor and deposed as president. I guess he seriously broke the modern characterization of Luthor as a more subtle criminal and everything, but it is actually a pretty fun story if you like liking things.
I made this tape in the summer of 2004, and yes, I guess it's a little embarrassing that I was still making mixtapes in 2004, but my purple Pontiac Sunfire only had a tape deck, so na. I was working as a bag boy at a grocery store, and had just realized I didn't want to go to med school, but would rather get a poetry MFA (you young idiot). The conceit of this tape was songs I'd like on a desert island? I still like all of them I guess, but my desert island list would probably be mostly different now.
Nobody hates Stephen King more than the people who don't actually read his stuff. Next time you're talking books with a bunch of people, try telling them that you liked It and/or the Dark Tower series and see how well that goes over. King's newest short story/novella Blockade Billy combines his love of baseball and grisly horror with the attention to detail that goes a long way to really flesh out his work. Since I'm such a big movie dork, I couldn't help but think of the story as though it were Major League told using the plot device from Citizen Kane with a horror twist. You can probably still find copies of Blockade Billy at Wal-Mart for 30% off the cover price, because I'm pretty sure they have a hard time selling books that don't involve sparkly vampires.
A Beer For Every State #7 - Wisconsin
This is a really, really awful fucking album by a really, really awful Canadian band who would have never been on the radio if it wasn't for CanCon requirements. The main thing I remember about this tape was that at a friend's birthday party in grade seven Internet John, our friend John A. and I lipsynched the song "Touching Cloth" from this album in a lipsynching contest. We were the dorkiest kids in our grade, and nobody expected us to break it down with fake guitars and everything, so we won like 13 bucks! Then the birthday kid took the money and got drunk on wine coolers. That's ok, though, because while he was puking behind his house the rest of us were playing girls v. boys kiss tag and the drunk kid's girlfriend kissed me (score I guess?). So the lesson is if you like terrible RHCP cover bands and wanting to kill yourself, this album is for you.
Hey, remember floppy disks? No, not the 3.5" ones that you used to trade copies of Wolfenstein 3D back in the day. I'm talking about the old 5.25" bad boys. I recently came across an old Commodore 1541 floppy disk drive, which at one time was quite the piece of gear, capable of handling single sided 5.25" floppy disks with a storage capacity of 170 kilobytes. According to the faded price tag on the box (it was bought at Zellers), the unit originally cost $341.99. Just think about that next time you're shopping for an external terabyte hard drive.
Last week, the BBC posted a story about a guy in Scotland wearing a horse mask who could be seen on Google Street View. The story was viewed over a million times and thus the legend of Horse-Boy was born. Personally, I could care less about who Horse-Boy really is and what possessed him to don the equine disguise. I just love to watch internet memes like this crop up. It's not like there's more important news out there that I should be paying attention to. 
Set in 1911 at the decline of the "old west," Red Dead Redemption is one of the best open world games I've ever played. It's made by Rockstar Games, who are most famous for the Grand Theft Auto series, and, yeah, basically it amounts to Grand Theft Horse, but is that such a bad thing? Those games are smart, hilarious, and fun to play, and this one is all of those things set in an amazingly beautiful pastiche of America's old west territories, and manages to pull off a much better emotional story than any of those games, too, with all the classic movie western themes of revenge and familial duty that would make Peckinpah and Leone proud or crap their dead pants because some kid's toy is ripping them off. 
It's Devo's first studio album in 20 years, and boy do I remember standing in line at the record store in 1990 with my fifteen Canadian dollars ready to pop down for Smooth Noodle Maps. No I don't, but if I did or that had actually happened I would have been tres disappointed - that album blows. This one's pretty good, though. I guess if you can put out one good album every quarter century you shouldn't feel too bad about yourselves, but don't take my word for it. Dahda da!
Reviewing the A-Team movie is not an easy task. I loved the show when I was a kid (and still do), but it's not like it was a good show. The plot of the film is mostly inconsequential, the A-Team are awesome badasses who get framed for a crime they didn't commit, they go to jail, they break out, they try to clear their names and many things explode in the process. I've read a few reviews that criticize the movie for its outlandish action scenes and set-pieces, which is ridiculous considering the source material. Other than the unfortunate speed freak editing style, the movie is entertaining, the crowd I saw it with certainly enjoyed it. However, if your favorite member of the A-Team was the van, you will be disappointed.
I was pretty tired and hung over the other day, so I thought I'd throw on a movie that wouldn't take too much effort to watch. I went with Thunderball because it had been ages since I'd seen any of the classic James Bond films and though I'd seen Thunderball before, all I could remember from the movie was that it had sharks in it. So yeah, SPECTRE steals some nukes, Bond sleeps with every woman with a speaking role in the film, there's a scene with a jet pack, lots of underwater fighting, the aforementioned sharks, and the guy who played Felix Leiter looked very much like a young Clint Eastwood. Sean "You're The Man Now Dog" Connery is in top form as Bond and the movie makes a point to put him in a lot of familiar places (casinos, beaches, bedrooms, secret lairs), almost making Thunderball a "greatest hits" of Bond locales and cliches. In the end, it's a Connery-era Bond flick, which means it's awesome. 
It's the year 20xx, and the only thing that can stop the sun from going out is a team of angsty scientists led by the Scarecrow. I guess the movie was pretty, but I think it's clear that Danny Boyle has serious ADD because a) he can't hold a shot for more than two seconds without cutting to something else and b) he can't tell a story for more than 40 minutes without changing it to a different story. Well, the part where the dude had to jump into the merciless vacuum of space for two seconds wearing only fiberglass insulation was kinda cool I guess.
A Beer For Every State #6: Texas
I actually heard the following comment as the credits rolled on Splice: "That's the most disgusting, fucked up movie I have ever seen." I can almost understand why the outspoken moviegoer felt that way. Splice is not an easy movie to watch, which should explain its poor box office receipts. It's a movie that has inspired both passionate praise and scathing criticisms. It's also virtually impossible to discuss the "controversial" elements of the film without spoiling most of Splice's final act. Fans of Cronenberg style body horror should check out the film, while those who think they're getting a retread of Species should consider another option at the multiplex.
Aaron (Jonah Hill) is a lowly record company employee tasked with getting whacked out rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand reprising his role from 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall) from London, England to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles for a big comeback concert. Get Him to the Greek is an odd couple road trip comedy set squarely within the Apatow universe of films (the Apatowniverse?), which should tell you right away if this is the sort of movie you would want to see. Hill and Brand play off each other well, with most of the jokes stemming from the indignities Hill must suffer in order to get Brand's character to do anything. One of the most welcome surprises in the movie comes from Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, who plays Hill's boss at the record company. Combs gets lots of good lines and doesn't have to stray far from his "real-life" persona. As mentioned, this movie is part of the Apatow canon, so expect colorfully casual profanities, minimal roles for women, drug use, characters who appear to have it all together but who are actually really lonely, and bromance. 
Porn actor goes on sword-wielding rampage killing one
Everybody thinks this movie is bad, but it's actually a pretty good movie, although there's no shooting and explosions, though, heads up. The plot is basically all about how Gene Roddenberry is a giant atheist, as a weird space machine named V'Ger is heading towards Earth to talk to "The Creator." You can probably figure out where that one is going.
When I think of single malt whiskies I consider Glenlivet 12 and Lagavulin 16 to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Glenlivet is light, sweet, easy on the wallet, and doesn't really give me a hard time. Lagavulin is dark, smoky, costs a fortune, and I can never seem to find it when I'm flush and in the mood. I guess they're a lot like Betty and Veronica, if the former were 12 and 16 years old respectively. Notes of smoke (duh), pine, citrus, ivory soap and honey.
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