Performed by Ensemble Modern, which puts this in late '92 and during Zappa's battle with cancer.
Happy 4th of July, everybody! And fuck cancer.
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Hi, I'm Thad. I build websites.
This blog's been up in one form or another since 1999. In that time I've written about topics ranging from comic books to video games to copyright law to creators' rights to Frank Zappa.
I also write eBooks and narrate audiobooks. Here's where you can find them:
America's been called a "grand experiment". I kinda like that -- I like the empiricist, Enlightenment choice of words.
An experiment -- you start out with something and see how it goes, and you can adjust the parameters as you go.
Regardless of political persuasion, I think most of us can agree that America was founded on some pretty great principles and some pretty awful ones too, and that a couple of hundred years later we've come a long way but we're still very much in the "Pretty good but not perfect" category.
Anyhow. As America's Birthday goes, I gotta go with September 17, 1787, the date the Constitution was ratified. But hell, the Declaration of Independence is pretty neat too, and worth a barbecue and some beers. (American beers. Though I noticed there were some British beers heavily marked down in the store the other day for some reason...)
Oh, and speaking of those two documents, this is on the front page of dictionary.com today:
Great job, reference.com. Great job.
Florentine Pogen. Per the poster, this is a soundboard recording from a show at the State Farm Theatre in Harrisburg, 1974-10-29.
That's Napoleon Murphy Brock on vocals again, and I'm sorely tempted to start tagging these posts with individual band members instead of just "Frank Zappa" but man that would be a lot more bookkeeping. But seriously, Zappa had a whole lot of great bands over the years. Both Zappas have had a lot of great bands over the years, now.
I don't go to as many movies as I used to.
Mostly it's because I used to go to a lot of movies with my dad, and he's in Maui now.
But price plays into it too. Ticket prices have fucking skyrocketed, outpaced pretty much only by comic books.
This week, I went to Tempe Cinemas a couple times. It used to be what we called the dollar theater, but now it's $3, or $2 on Tuesdays.
But on the plus side, the place has improved. They've fixed up the bathrooms, the theaters are in better shape, and they appear to have switched to digital projectors, because the picture is fucking clean. Digital projection gets rid of one of the major drawbacks to seeing a movie at the cheap theater: you no longer find yourself looking at a print that's been viewed a few hundred times and is covered in scratches.
Anyhow, I caught two very different movies this week: The Pirates: Band of Misfits and Cabin in the Woods.
Pirates is Aardman. And I love me some Aardman, and have since I first saw The Wrong Trousers close on 20 years ago.
It's got a great cast (and #2 even looks like Martin Freeman), a ton of sight gags and one-liners that fly by fast, and a swordfight with Queen Victoria. It is recommended viewing for all ages!
Cabin in the Woods is not recommended viewing for all ages, but it is recommended viewing! I went into it cold, knowing nothing about it beyond "cabin-in-the-woods horror movie co-written and produced by Joss Whedon", and I think that is the optimal way to see it, so I will say nothing about it except that I love that there is actually a plot explanation for all the clichés, all the archetypes, and why the teenagers keep doing stupid shit.
Now, there was something a little odd about it: I'm pretty confident it was another digital copy, because the print was crystal clear for the most part, but there were a couple of spots, lines, and pops over the course of the movie. I'm curious: were these artificial and intentional? Like, did anybody else see it and notice a big black spot on the print right after the girl takes off her top? Because I'm tempted to believe this was some kind of Grindhouse-style deliberate fuckery, but I can't say for sure.
(Failing that, is there any other possible explanation for a few analog artifacts on an otherwise pristine, seemingly digital print? Like, is there a digital-file-to-analog-projector thing going on and the projector occasionally hiccups, or what? Or did I just see a film print that was in really, really good shape despite being at the cheap theater?)
Now, despite my gushing about the picture quality, which is better than I've ever seen it at Tempe Cinemas previously, the projection left something to be desired. Pirates had a couple of edges cut off, and about the right 1/8 of the picture in Cabin was out of focus.
Still and all, the seats were nice, the picture and sound were great, the audiences were well-behaved -- I had a better experience at the cheap theater than I usually do at the regular theater, and I suspect I will be making this a more frequent habit. There are plenty of movies coming out that I'd like to see in the theater but not pay full price for.
And they had a promo going: a new restaurant called Pizza 'n Greens opened a few doors down from the theater, and they're offering a $1 pizza slice if you bring a ticket stub in (or 10% off your whole bill). We went in after Pirates, and each ordered a slice. Instead of a slice, they made us fresh little miniature pizzas, and the service was great. We decided to come back and spend more -- which we did, after seeing Cabin. This time I tried a calzone and my lady tried a fatoush (Mediterranean salad) -- because as it turns out the menu is a sort of interesting mix of pizza and middle-eastern food. (I was tempted to have a chicken shawerma but decided I was in the mood for a good calzone at the last minute.) Anyway, once again, good food, great service, look forward to going again, recommend them, and oh by the way they deliver until 5 AM so if you need delivery at all hours of the night they're a good option for that.
And then we went to Changing Hands and I found a used copy of The Art of Ditko for $15, so I had to pick that up. And I also found that Stross's Rule 34 is out in paperback, so I grabbed me one of those too.
All in all, good times. And man, there are a lot of links in this post! My post probably looks like I ran Intellitext over it, except the links actually useful and pertinent and (hopefully) not just fucking obnoxious.
According to the uploader, it's from the Capitol Theater, Passaic, NJ, May 9, 1973.
Another fantastic instrumental piece from The Grand Wazoo.
Once again: recent, obvious, and Emmy-winning. Specifically, the '07 Emmy. Dexter.
A positively wonderful juxtaposition, turning the normal and everyday into something violent and stomach-turning. The camera work, the music, and Hall all sell it.
And yeah, Simpsons did this one too, last Halloween. And once again, Art of the Title has something to say.
I've got more to say about Dexter and his role in the pantheon of guilty-pleasure vigilante justice antiheroes -- because he takes the premise and drives it right the hell off a cliff, pushing the trope to reductio ad absurdum levels.
But that's an essay for another day. And it's got Batman in it.
Sorry for another short post -- but hell, this makes four straight weeks of posting something every day, anyway.
Zappa with Floyd, live in Belgium, 1969.
1977; not sure where.
Great improv song; simple two-bar phrase with Zappa riffing like, well, a Mother.
Another old Who review. This one just got a Special Edition rerelease; the review is of the Not-Special Edition. And as before, it contains spoilers of some 28-year-old Doctor Who serials.
Originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2008-11-25.
Just watched the inappropriately-named Resurrection of the Daleks. Not bad, but a whole lot like Earthshock: a Davison serial with one of the Big Two enemy races, a lot of running around on a spaceship (and Rula Lenska's character is pretty much identical to the Captain in Earthshock), and ending with someone sacrificing himself to destroy the ship and a companion leaving. Of course, that last similarity actually works pretty well -- while Adric isn't mentioned, it's easy to assume Stien's death reminds Teagan too much of his and that's part of why she's so shaken up at the end.
The premise -- that the Daleks are totally helpless by themselves and forced to reluctantly rescue Davros in order to get out of a jam -- is almost as thin here as it was in Destiny of the Daleks, but at least the "we need a genetic engineer" explanation fits better than the rather nonsensical "we are slaves to logic and don't know how to improvise in a war" explanation used in the latter. Plus, Davros as much as says these Daleks aren't very advanced models and he's going to work on making them better; of course that's the bastard about time travel stories. In the Dalek timeline, this has to take place well before their first few appearances.
The climax is the Doctor's confrontation with Davros, which echoes the Fourth Doctor's "Have I the right?" scene in Genesis of the Daleks, and which still makes for decent drama here even though you just want him to pull the effing trigger already. It's not the ethical dilemma it was in Genesis (is it okay to kill the first batch of Daleks before they do any harm?) or, years later, The Parting of the Ways (is it worth taking out the entire Earth to kill the Daleks?); it's just the Doctor and Davros, with no innocent lives in the balance. And the Doctor's already killed several Daleks by this point.
This is the first I've seen of Turlough, and I can immediately understand why people like him: the companions are a pretty fucking bland and indistinguishable bunch, and he stands out by being more complex than most of them. He's intelligent but also arrogant and self-serving; that's a lot more compelling than just the girlfriend du jour.
Of all the DVD's I've watched, this one had the most noticeable issues with the transfer. There are a couple of places where the picture ripples noticeably. It's not a big deal but distracting enough to make note of; seems like they could have put more effort into fixing that.
Anyway. Not a bad Dalek serial; better than the previous one but not as good as Genesis. (Of course, Genesis is probably the best one, so that's sort of a meaningless comparison.) Decent; I'd put this one in the "rent, don't buy" pile.
I Am the Walrus, with the incomparable Ike Willis on vocals. Warning: The video ends pretty abruptly. (The other vids I've found end just as abruptly and look worse; let me know if you find a better one and I'll post it up.)