January 5th, 2009

Inaugural post, etc. etc. You can read my boring "about me," but in a nutshell, I've resolved to keep current in 2009. I'm going to really be a citizen of this year; I'm going to commit. Let's hope it works out.

MUSIC:

Everybody loves Merriweather Post Pavilion. (Surprise!) It's moments like this that I would sell a kidney to get ahold of a record player. I guess I'll just have to wait for the CD release.

I guess Jaydiohead is fun. The songs all feel like less than the sum of their parts, and the pairings seem like they only happened because Minty Fresh Beats had a pun in mind. It's fun for half an hour but then there's no reason to come back to it. I prefer Viva La Hova anyway; it had smarter arrangement and a "legitimate" track, and I listened to it more than once. Confession: I didn't even like the Grey Album that much.

BLK JKS signed! Can't wait to get my hands on that re-released Mystery EP. For now I'll just enjoy that fun video on the Very Best's Myspace. Remember, that mixtape by the Very Best is still available for free.

Blame my chiptune affinity, but my favorite song of the day was the stream of Dan Deacon's "Get Older" over on Pitchfork. I'm probably the only person in the world who hasn't listened to Spiderman of the Rings all the way through, so I didn't know what to expect, and what I got was crazy hectic bliss... I'll take it.

FILM:

IFC Film's description of Silent Night has piqued my curiosity; I'll be rallying to see at at Austin's kickass drafthouse theatres. Also on IFC, a handy Sundance preview.

Shocker: The posters for crappy movies are crappy. If we're lucky, live-action Street Fighter and live-action Dragonball will get in a poorly choreographed fight and kill each other before release.

It's official: my roommate saw The Wrestler before me. Sure, he saw it on his tiny mac screen, pirated, and I'm only days away from seeing it at the Angelika up in Dallas. But when you spend a year of your life obsessing about one film, a film by your favorite director, and a certain media company severely botches the release by sitting on the film until buzz fades, and you spend every day googling around for clips and trailers, you want to see it before the guy who you room with, if only for his personal safety.

WEIRD:

Jim Jones thinks being a gangster rapper means fighting with Ne-Yo's posse. News to the rest of us.

From the consistently wonderful BoingBoing, Thor prevented a robbery.

WORLD:

This one hits close to home: Austin activist Brandon Darby has admitted to working as an informant for the FBI, effectively spying on meetings amongst activists in the months leading to the RNC. Ostensibly, this is legitimate because of a trial involving molotov cocktail allegations, but Darby was an informant for eighteen months before the RNC, well before that plan allegedly developed. Also, whether or not McKay and Crowder intended to use the firebombs (which is far from clear), they didn't bring any weapons to the convention, and yet they face 30 years in prison if found guilty. I'll be following this closely.

Israel's invasion of Gaza continues. Democracy Now estimates the death toll at 531, eighty since the ground invasion. Casualties include Palestinian civilian Mohammed al-Atta, aged 25; senior Hamas official Nizar Rayan, aged 49; five Israelis whose names I am still trying to find. The U.S. continues to block a UN ceasefire.

PERSONAL:

I'm not a big football fan; I know how to talk about it and appreciate it, but I'm rarely first to know about sports news. Tonight was special: my college football team kicked some ass. It was nice to sit down and watch the game with my father, despite our mutual wrath towards the frequent commercials.

I'm still here in San Antonio for the break; I head up to Dallas in a few days, and a little while later I'll be back in Austin for college. A friend visited today and we had a good time mocking an old Fred Williamson movie. If you don't know about his acting cateer, you're missing out. (Warning: violent, offensive, and really stupid)

2009 FILMS SEEN: 0
2009 SONGS ON MY ITUNES: 2
Current Computer Situation: MacBook Pro, sitting comfortably on my old rolling desk chair.