Indefinite Bohemia

I got a pair of GEEK boxer shorts for christmas and it makes sense. In the four days I have been off from school I have accomplished one thing beside buying presents for the family: I now know how to podcast. So forgive me this first adventure. It's a crazy little demo I did on the Lapple featuring Epic Trance and T.S. Eliot. For those of you out there who remind me to stay out e, adderrol and what-not, here's a reminder to keep on reminding. You have no idea what craziness I can get up to when I'm alone.

Indefinite Bohemia

Darth Vader Calls The Emperor

Darth Vader Calls The Emperor after the death star blows up.

I am afraid of the Dark

Back in the day, Are You Afraid of the Dark? was the show of choice. This was back in the age when quality ghost stories could potential get you a snuggle or (gasp!) maybe even a kiss from a pretty girl who you freaked out with a story. This was an early 'get-laid' tactic. If you could tell a scary enough story you could also pick up 'street-cred' with the guys in the group.

On an almost tribal level, telling a scary entertaining story is almost like playing the shaman in a pre-pubescent neighborhood heirarchy. As the teller of scary tales, you were the commander of the frightening. You manipulate the elements and the components to induce fear. You control the chills of your friends in a twisted, preverse manner that almost alienates your from society in the telling.

This episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? is legitimately scary. After faint memories of the show and how 'awesome' it was, I found myself looking it up for a review on a Tuesday with little actual work to be done. Enter YouTube and a window into my past.

My Roomate and I remembered Are You Afraid of the Dark? to be entertaining if not hokey and hilarious. Scary was not a quality that we attributed to the show; we were not afraid of the dark.

After watching this little episode, we were scared out of our minds. This was absolutely terrifying. It was goddamn chilling. I am actually still recovering. In many ways, I am going to have to go get some Hot Chocolate or something to perk my human psyche. I feel like Harry Potter in the Prisoner of Azkaban, the dementor of this classic Nickelodeon show has emptied my being of happiniess.

I need some action or sugar.

I am afraid of the dark.

Snakes on a Plane - My YouTube Expose

Excuse my first foray into the realm of YouTube and home-made films. This ins't pornography or anything, but I wish it was.

OK GO! More Fun with Treadmills

OK GO - "Here it goes again"

A friend found this video on late night MTV2. It's amazing. I saw OK GO! in Providence last year on a $5 show. They were great. At the end of the show, the band got out on stage for their encore and did this amazing dance routine.

I guess it was a taste of things to come.

With this video, OK GO fulfils the image that they left on the Stage in Providence last January. They're cool. They're having a good time, and they don't care who knows it. Like Hot Hot Heat, the OK GO sound is poppy and catchy, but also distinctively Artsy. Like Talking Heads (Who actually formed at RISD in Providence to define Art Rock) OK GO thinks a lot about image and a lot about the purpose of their music.

Maybe with this Track "Here it goes again" Ok Go shows us that this agind Art Rock foursome has a couple more twists left in the clothesline.

Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane was cult before it was even filmed. The idea that Hollywood would produce a movie as obvious, ridiculous, and gratuitous as Snakes on a Plane seemed to connect with an American youth all too willing to revel in the absurd.

In truth, the movie, and it's enormous word-of-mouth hype are anything but disappointing. This movie is AMAZING. It is absolutely hilarious, and at times, downright scary.

Samuel L. Jackson's decision to be in this movie may go down in history as one of the wisest choices for a falling Hollywood actor. A number of bloggers and internet pundits called Jackson's decision an inevitable choice in the quest to find the ultimate flop. But this is the wrinkle in which Snakes on a Plane lives and breathes.

Like The Producers, Snakes on a Plane is born to lose. It is designed to fail, engineered to flop. But in this decision, Snakes' producers hit solid gold. By making the movie as cliched, and predictable and gratuitous as they could, they created a film that is not only enjoyable by downright thrilling. It is like watching a two hour cartoon on Saturday morning television. You know every twist, you can predict who will and will not die, and you can expect Samuel L. jackson to be the fucking man.

That's what happens. That is what makes this movie SO SATISFYING.

In a interview with Jon Stewart, Samuel L. Jackson said that he didn't even read the script before agreeing to do it. He read the title and decided to go for it. We, like Jackson, only need to read the title before WE go to see it. Sure it's obvious, but hell, isn't all of the fodder that Hollywood feeds us?

At its core, Snakes on a Plane is a bad movie that embraces its faults and becomes the most enjoyable movie of the summer. There has been NOTHING better this summer. There hasn't been a movie like Snakes on a Plane since Independence Day.

As a satire on the American Summer Blockbuster, Snakes on a Plane seems to cry for justice in the Hollywood movie industry. It makes fun of itself, and does not fall into the usual Blockbuster pretentiousness for which Hollywood is known the world over. Snakes on a Plane is not the best acted, or best produced, or best made film of the summer. BUT it is the best film.

Do yourself a frickin' service and see this movie. Everyone will talking about, it is a instant cult classic and the college campuses will not be able to live without it.

So save yourself the embarassment of thinking that Superman was the best film of the summer, and see SNAKES ON A PLANE.
As Samuel L. Jackson explained to Stewart on Comedy Central, "Snakes on a Plane may be the best film of the summer."
There is no maybe and no doubt.

IT IS!

Anarchy reigns at the Abbey

The Ultimate Showdown

MSTRKRFT - Easy Love

I escaped Acquidneck Island long enough to hear great music that wasn't playing at the Music Box or on 'BRU. The song was called "Easy Love", and it had the kind of Daft Punk flair that first hooked me on house all those many years ago. Digging a little deeper, I found MSTRKRFT, the artist behind "Easy Love", to be two underground DJs out of Toronto.

Their website linked to a myspace and a playlist of remixs and original material. IT was SOLID. Ever since Daft Punk dropped the ball with their Human After All album, I have been suffering a severe case of hip- House withdrawal. In fact, the house scene has been so weak since Daft Punk tried to resurrect the genre in 2004, that I have been forced to look backward, and buy OLD albums to get my groove on.

Now, thanks to MSTRKRFT, I've got a new summer anthem, and a new House duo to believe in. MSTRKRFT falls into the rich lineage of artists that include Safari Duo, Daft Punk, Deep Dish, and Sasha & Digweed. I salute them for providing me with some solid Techno Anthemry for a summer in desperate need of a soundtrack.

ON THE VIDEO I haven't completed decided if the video is intentionally ridiculous or a literal splurge in Soft - Core Pornography. In many ways, the video pays direct homage to the kind of 'sex-me-up' image that is associated with Techno and House music. In other aspects, the video is downright hilarious in its vulgarity.

While the video certainly starts off with hot women in skimpy outfits doing suggestive sucking movements, the full out splurges late in the video threaten to stain the entire video with a taste of inappropriate vulgarity. The women are hot, the video is fun, but the message is unclear.

Is this a sex anthem, a soft-core porno soundtrack, or the a digital joke played on an international community of cyber-rock cognizantis? You decide, and drop me a line.

Lemonade & Godlessness

I paid my dues on the sidestreets today.
Between work and work, the lemonade vendors
Exploited me with promises of refreshment
And satisfaction.
There are no 8-year old pamphleteers here.
The Marxists have not yet penetrated the
Juevenile psyche, and funneled their voice
Through the children of Neighborhood America.

But the capitalists have.

and on hundreds of sidestreets and street corners
Around the country, budding entrepreneurs are screaming
LEMONADE! to the passerbys and leaning anxiously on
Their summer tables when the business is slow.

The tykes mix water and powder in Gatorade coolers
Left over from soccer season, and use plastic cups from
The barbeque collection.

Their parents write cute things like “College Fund”
On the Tupperware they use to hold the money,
So that passing geriatrics or other members of the
Customer cognizanti can laugh slyly at the clever kids.

The street is empty, for a moment, and the
Vigilante lemonade vendor kicks dully at the pavement;
His life has peaked in interest and rolled back again
Into the boredom that prompted his excursion into capitalism.
He thinks suddenly that it might be better if he had a sign at the end of the street,
and wonders if the advertising would pay off.
A car rolls around the corner and inspires an insipid
LEM-ON-ADE!
From the impossibly loud, mostly monotonic,
& ultimately uninspired, 8 year old.

I buy another cup, and wonder as he fills it up
If I could pull out a chair
and sit at the lemonade counter
Recounting troubles and toils
In the desert of the real.

But the boy’s mother has stopped washing the dishes now,
And anxiously, she looks out the window to see what kind of sketch-job
Won’t just get his lemonade, laugh at the “college fund” Tupperware,
And the hell on with his life.

The father comes down the stairs and begins repairing
A perfect part of the porch while glancing sideways at me.
He notes mentally my height, eye color,
Potential weight, and then assesses
Whether or not he can kick my ass.

Deciding yes,
The man starts up an awkward conversation
Coming down the stairs and brandishing his Home Depot hammer
As if he strikes nails and makes thunder
Proper Thor-style.

Another car rolls by and Trump jr. shouts his sale pitch
At the minivan.
I throw away my cup in the recycle bin,
And thank him for his hospitality.

I wonder if I’ll be able to get home without
Being jumped by another member of the Block Party for Profiteers
Hidden in the bodies of average American children.

I secretly hope that some subverted 11 year old,
Tempered with loss, exploitation, and a taste
Of bitter employment,
Will scream Communist propaganda as I take another sidestreet
On the way from work to work,
With a hindu desire to see some sense
Of harmony re-established on the all-too calm
American streets.

World Cup Fever

So the World Cup has begun and I have fallen full prey of the veritable World Cup fever. In my irreverent disarray, I have begun a new blog that is dedicated SOLELY to World Cup 2006.

With help from the most knowledgable soccer scholar in New England, the intellectual Thomas Rodelli, I set sail into the wonderful tempest that is,

THE WORLD CUP.

Check it out @

http://the2006worldcupgermany.blogspot.com

Newport Film Festival

Nothing says it’s summer in Newport like the Newport International Film Festival. I call it by its full name here, but for the RI natives, and dedicated Newport filmophiles around 02840, its much better known as the Film Fest.

This year, I was late in getting my volunteer program up-to-speed. But, as expected, the general chaos of NIFF affairs and the great dearth of local, readily available help easily ingratiated me.

Last year, I was stuck at the Box Office moving boxes and putting up posters until I realized that I could practically walk into a film with a volunteer shirt on. That inspired me to spontaneously ‘volunteer’ at the Newport Art Museum screen, and vis-à-vis get to see Stolen, THE hot film of 2005.

This year, I have been stationed at Oprea House, which is generally preferable to any other venues because it offers three films in one location. Teamed up with my brother, I have balloted, ushered, assisted with video calibration and chatted up actors, writers and filmmakers alike. There truly is nothing like the Film Festival to start the Newport summer in proper cultural style.

Xbox on the Porch

We moved the Xbox out on the porch and played Unreal Tournament with four players while the Thunderstorms moved in from the West.

Some skaters walked by at around eleven and stood there stunned while we shot each other up on a 15-inch screen and technoed out to a mix by Krafty Kuts.

It was proper Hackers.
It was proper cyber boheme, and as we sat in the building wind and pressure, with flashes from the thunderstorm reflecting across Narragansett Bay, and my mother screaming for us to come in, I thought to myself,

Upon what digital domain will the modern man lay down his controller for the praise of Mother Nature in the Midnight Melee eternal?

Just a thought.

Summer

All my life, I've wanted to write something true. Something definitive and new. Something worth reading.

It seems sometimes that just when you think that you've run out of air, when you can no longer gasp another breath and the world seems to stifle your very existence, you awake from a preaternatural slumber and explode.

This is the moment that I am waiting for,
This is the mission of my summer soliliqouys.

Nintendo Nirvana

Found this video while reviewing Google Video's Top 100. It seems that some students at Gordon College decided to act out Super Mario 3 at a talent show. It is, if nothing else, Gameboy Genius.

Colour like no other...

So I followed up on a story on MSNBC on the Clio Awards. Every year, the Clio Awards recognize the best advertisements in the world.

This was my absolute favorite. It was made by this Danish director who had the idea of dropping 250,000 bouncey balls into the streets of San Francisco. I do believe that this ad may be the most stunning, inspired and creative work of advertising that I have ever seen.

Check it out.

The Return of My Muse

She was

the curious rekindling of lost dreams
& is now
returned, rediscovered, reignited.

reenter the royal we
my princess and me
(just me, + she).

There was
The Death of the Artist in me
There is
The Resurrection of the Poet in me

WE.

Let the noun stand alone.
It is collective and substantial.
(Introduction unrequired
For a love unexpired)

There was
The poetry of Middle, Ages and Ages hence
There is
The new poetry of Ginsberg & Cummings since
There was
The midnight muse and the fairy in the drink
There is
The muse returned and love’s lost labors linked.

There was She was
There is She is

(explanation unrequired
for a love that is refired)

She is
The curious rekindling of lost dreams
& me,
(she is the ( ))

Live on WJHD

Lion & Chessboard

I found a plastic Aslan in a Happy Meal.
(Pre-packaged Christianity demonstrates Pop-Culture)
His mouth moved, like a puppet,
His voice inaudible and readily substituted.
The
Beady, bleary eyes of the animal did not
Recall the glory his maker had intended.

C.S. Lewis in skepticism searched the night-sky for his Aslan
- I found mine in a happy-meal.
Over 2 million served reminds that stomachs can hold down dilutions
And mass-media can market masses to the mindless.
Narnia is a wonderland, a wishland or a wantland
Depending on the Walden you read
Or the Walt Disney you believe in.
And I found my tepid Aslan uninspiring.

And there will be an age when the lost
Find themselves in such symbols and such icons.
There will be a time when the dilutions are diluded
And the symbols symbolize symbols that were only allusions
To begin with.

The weakness of the modern mind consoles the expired
The plastic of practicality extinguishes the inspired.

Hallucinations of prophetic mass-media inhabit the mind
In occasional visions Aslan walks mildly through Elysian fields,
His roar triumphant, the eternal salvation of a dreamworld
On the BBC war broadcast radio,
And Lewis is lost at his side like a tired child
patting the Great lion
and whispering grace.

Meek puppet playthings do not participate in such imagination,
I found my Aslan in a Happy Meal, and
The plastic wrapping said Choking Hazard in
17 languages. The tower of Babel is closer,
Lewis whispers to the wind and lion,
While somewhere, someone separate is calling out
Christians! to the fierce and nameless masses.

Fern Gully: The Quest for Erotic Erudition

This article is 14 years overdue. I could not express myself with coherent letters when I was first tortured by Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest. In retrospect, Fern Gully seems like an acid trip with pokemon characters. Robin Williams played a bat with electrodes going through his brain. A couple of fairies flew around the rainforest on neon butterflies shrinking people at will. Tim Curry, yea TIM CURRY played the villain Hexxus, who may or may not have been a malicious can of spray paint.

I’d still like to know WTF was going on. Fern Gully seems to have been a movie about bats on electroshock therapy. Robin William’s character, Batty Koda, had two electrodes running right through his head. At times, unexplainably, Koda would be shocked Shitless. At other instances, Koda would crack out completely representing Robin Williams own difficulties with the script and the producers suggestion of ecstasy as payment for acting.

The fairy-chick, called Crysta was honestly pretty hott. She kinda looked like Courtney Cox meets tinkerbell, and I would have to agree that she was a pretty big sex symbol for prepubescent boys at my local middle school. But Crysta also represented the feminism of the 90’s. She is confident in herself and capable, but still requires the warmth and comfort of a man. Crysta’s political agenda is something like Ralph Nader’s green politics in the body of Hillary Clinton. Her message is one of peace and hedonism. In fact, Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest (Director’s cut) features the line, “Give it to me straight Bill, and don’t stop. I want to *%$! Like a KANGAROO.”

That’s what Fern Gully is actually all about. Hidden beneath a veil of environmental concern, The Last Rainforest represents a sexual odyssey for one fortunate logger named Zak. After being “accidentally” shrunked by Crysta, Zak must confront his fetish fears and fantasies in the tropical, tripped out atmosphere of Fern Gully. Zak’s loss on innocence is The Last Rainforest. In the middle of the sexual subversion, some loggers threaten to destroy the rainforest, but this is a secondary plot, hiding the epic quest of eroticism beneath a veil of family values.

Fern Gully was a film designed to indoctrinate kids with the SAVE THE RAINFOREST mentality of the 90’s. Sure I was only four, but Fern Gully baffled my mind. Trippy mushroom scenes alluded to the large quantities of LSD the filmmakers were using. The animation was also so cracked out that it’s stylized “Acid-Anime” may be the only known use of peyote-induced child labor in the history of film. In short, Fern Gully was at best a seizure, and at worst two-hours of visually induced epilepsy.

“Just beyond your dreams,
Lives a secret world.
Where every tree is home.
Every sound is a song.
And humans exist
Only in fairy tales
Until now…”

Happy Birthday Laura

Myst: My Cybersmith Quest Remembered

Back in the day, you know, like '96 or something, My brother lived in Boston with our parents. On the weekends, my Dad used to take us to Harvard Square where we chilled in the shops, ate in the classic spots and took in intellectual culture. The coolest thing that was ever in Harvard Square was Cybersmith, an uber cool internet cafe from the first age of the internet.(http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/jason.html)

My memories of that place are limited, but I remember a bunch of internet access stations, hubs of gaming computers and an awesome Virtual Reality station where others would watch you navigate an digital world as you donned a visor and gloves. One day, while cruising through Cybersmith, I noticed two men playing a strange game with unbelievably clear graphics. This was an age of sonic the hedgehog and extremely pixelated TV gaming. What I saw on the monitor that day was more than a game, it was a dream sequence.

The men who were playing looked perplexed and enthralled. They were taking notes on the game and had a large bible of notes from a bookseller called Unlocking MYST. Under their breath, they mumbled thanksgiving from the guide text. "Thank God we bought this, we would have never figured this out otherwise." They may have been Harvard men, but I suppose they were Engineers. Who knows, they may have been intellectual wannabes, desperately trying to decipher the greatest puzzle of computer gaming's middle age.

They left the computer hub a few minutes later and left the game up. I watched them leave and then proceeded over to the computer. There was a minute and a half left on the session. I strolled casually around the digital landscape trying to figure what was going on. The game seemed to have no point and was only alluring in the randomness of the landscape. But something kept me there, something kept me searching and trying to figure the game out. The session ended suddenly and I looked up. My Dad refused to pay for a computer game and we walked on.

Recently, I remembered Cybersmith and Myst during a mundane Calc class. I dreamed of playing the game again, and this time, conquering the epic macintosh puzzle. I have enlisted the services of friends to help me achieve my dreams. Together, as Project Myst, we will conquer the game in the our senior spring and achieve ultimate nirvana.

This is what I am after.

This is why I come to you.

V for Vendetta

Opera House gave an advanced screening of V for Vendetta Thursday Night at 10:05. It was probably the coolest thing Opera House has ever done. There was 10 people there besides Conor, Grady and I. Exiting the theatre to an empty Newport felt surreal. The film had changed the landscape somehow, and the calm coziness I feel in Newport was gone. The town seemed hostile and over-ordered. In the emptiness of the night, stop signs seemed superfluous; I could feel the romanticized anarchism growing in my gut.

V for Vendetta had enough media attention and advertising to get Hugo Waving elected President with Natalie Portman as his First Lady. With that said, the film does something that has alluding the Wachowski brothers since their 1999 smash success, live up to the hype.

In an age of reality television, TV Personality talking heads for News sources and quagmire conflict bordering on Civil War, V for Vendetta shines as an oasis of reflection and an elevation from the mundane of an American Cineplex. It is action-packed, elusive in subtleties and powerful in its allegory. Separating itself even from such direct Hollywood stabs at Washington as Good Night and Good Luck or Syriana, V for Vendetta infuses social-political concern into the fabric of a modern blockbuster. It is, if nothing else, the most thought-provoking $70 million film that has ever been produced.

But V for Vendetta, ironically, is not even much of an action film. Like the once-staple Cubrick and Bradbury-inspired works of Dystopian futurama, V for Vendetta adheres to the conventions of the sci-fi thriller. Its plot offers the complexity that ensnares an enlightened audience and allows the exploration of deep contemporary themes.

To avoid plot description, V for Vendetta is the story of revolution within the totalitarian regime of 2020 England. Rising to power within a world of chaos and confusion, England’s top-politicians offer a conservative, proto-fascist state to ease the concerns of British citizens. Media control centers the conservative party’s control mirroring an America that is all to dependent on the “liberal” media and a Russian alternative where President Putin controls all state media outlets.

V for Vendettas’ exploration of gay/lesbian themes also reflects the sentiments of a country embroiled in polarizing battle between red and blue states. Ironically, the repercussions of the Iraq war, avian flu and domestics tensions embroil Vendetta’s America into full civil war. The backdrop of the film’s action offers a rich tapestry of post-modern what-ifs in extension of today’s current contentions.

In the action, Hugo Weaving plays (or rather voices) V, a midnight vigilante and radical genius, whose meticulous planning and diabolical devotion for revenge take him against the government himself. V is the film’s icon, wearing a mask of Guy Fawkes, and a hat of Pilgrim stature. His impressive eloquence and historical allusion to the Guy Fawkes (architect of the Gunpowder Plot 1605) elevates the character above rabble vigilantes. Interrupting the rape of Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), V quotes Macbeth before manhandling his opponents in proper Neo-style (one of the few transparent influences of The Matrix on the film). The connection between V as mysterious revolutionary and Evey, as an anonymous member of the conservative state, reveals an odd dichotomy: the everyman as represented by Evey and the anyman as manifested in V expose an inherent truth in the architecture of revolution.

Portman’s acting is superb throughout the film. Her role and emotions becomes pivotal as the film remains true to its character and does not unmask V. A strong cast of British and Irish greats back-up Portman and Weaving at the top. John Hurt (Chancellor Sutler) returns to familiar ground he covered in an adaptation of Orwell’s 1984. Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea also come on board to steer the film home.

V for Vendetta’s explosion in the doldrums of a weak movie market, raise to perhaps unjust heights. Nevertheless, the film’s brilliance, vision and action make one of the finest films since The Matrix, which was released over seven years ago. Marking the anniversary of The Matrix’s runaway success those many years ago, the Wachowski’s film also coincides with another anniversary, the three year mark of the war in Iraq. While this may be sheer coincidence and the film’s capitalistic backers would unlikely reveal political undercurrents in the movie’s release, V’s own words come cryptically through. “There are no coincidences,” Argues V near the middle of the film, “Only the illusion of coincidence.”

Hypnertomachia

Welcome to the Architecture of Anarchy.