BEDROOM BEDLAM

I really need to clean up/organize my room some day. Hopefully soon:

This bookshelf was filled up as soon as I moved in.



So was this headboard.



The top of the headboard, filled with stuff I'm reading/have to get to soon.



Unwatched DVDs. These are just TV shows. Unwatched films are in the closet. Watched films are in a filing cabinet outside my parents' bedroom.



My dead sexy bookcase, already full. :( There's Alan Moore glowering menacingly in the corner.



I haven't actually used this desk the way it was meant to be in years.



More stuff to get through.



I'm so out of room, I've got shit piled up on the floor.

In a way, I'm almost proud that my room is full of books/magazines/CDs/DVDs. It's tricky walking through it now. I wish I had the biggest room in the house. I seem to have the most stuff. No one else really reads. :(

MUSIC/RADIO

I'm looking for more new music these days. Things seem so up in the air, like you can't tell where things are heading. And a number of albums have disappointed me. I only liked maybe 3 songs from Daft Punk's Human After All (after loving Discovery), the Chemical Brothers' Push The Button wasn't bad, but didn't do anything new either; it was a bit predictable. The Prodigy's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned I heard last year in Edinburgh and it almost put me to sleep. Moby's Hotel was a real disappointment, nothing there made much of an impression and I just ended up missing all the soul stuff. I see why everyone harps on about The Bravery but I still found myself wanting more. The new Weezer, Make Believe, also didn't set my pants on fire. M83's Before The Dawn Heals Us was a surprise, but misleading. People said Air but really they're more My Bloody Valentine. Not bad, but not what I'm looking for, I guess. Queens of the Stone Age turned in a good album, Lullabies To Paralyze. But so far the only thing I've been replaying often is Bloc Party's Silent Alarm. I am glad to announce my second great album of the year so far: Beck's Guero, which is a return to a more lively, party sound, less Midnite Vultures and more of Odelay. I think it's a good move that all his albums sound so different from the one that came before it.

Neva and I watched the Bjork performance at the Royal Opera House the other night (fucking fantastic; brought me to tears several times) and I ended up listening to Post and Vespertine again as a result. Maybe that's what I'm looking for now; at the time I heard those albums the music seemed strange and exciting and unconventional, but Bjork's voice was the anchor. And it's nice that years later those albums still play great. I should dig up Medulla again. So maybe that mix of strange and new but with something still human and-- I don't know-- organic, or natural, to it.

I really hope the new Hot Hot Heat is great. You can listen to some of the songs off of Elevator at their website. And I can't wait for the Pedicab album to be released. I don't think it surprised anyone that they got signed so quickly, but I have to admit it was a bit unexpected to hear they played at Absinth.

I was listening to Zbigniew Preisner's score for Rouge the other day and was amazed to realize that he's such a strong influence on the Final Fantasy soundtracks of Nobuo Uematsu I enjoyed in high school. A day or two later and I found myself listening to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy 6 just to make sure (was also pleasantly surprised to find I still remembered Uematsu's name right).

Joey Comeau makes an interesting observation.

Speaking of ipods, I was thinking again of finally getting one, what with the price drops. The shuffle's no good to me without an LCD display (which is why it's a shuffle, people tell me, but when you can have 16 CDs and are looking for THAT ONE SONG you're fucked). But looking up some of the competition on the web, I found that some of the Archos stuff now has video (and others are practically ipod/pdas), and storage up to 100 GB. Still expensive, though. And the recent news of Apple's battery supplier being able to triple the battery life told me that I should wait a while yet. Especially since phone companies are going to try to get into the game too. Ah, well. By the time I could afford it anyway it already would have been a couple of months. I also wonder when customizability will enter the fray.

It will also be very interesting to watch the success of Sony's PSP upon its release next week. Since it can play video and music, display photos, and of course, play games, I wonder if it's going to put more things into motion.

One of the reasons I wanted an mp3 player was to listen to longer stuff like podcasts. Most of the music I've been getting into lately I was introduced to through internet radio shows and mp3/music blogs. I listen to these while I'm working but wish I could take it with me while traveling. It would also allow for the convenience of listening to international radio, maybe some of the BBC and/or NPR stuff. Trinka sent me a link to this radio documentary, Chasing Love by Miguel Macias, and it's quite interesting (only an hour). I didn't even know there were radio documentaries. It's a 3-year-project of this graduate student (I think), where he edited interviews with lots of people about love while researching the history of romantic love and how it ties into other aspects of society like economics, psychology, culture, etc. It reminded me of Waking Life. It was an eye-opener for me (metaphorically speaking) because I didn't know you could do this sort of thing with radio. Looking around the Transom website, you'll find that there are radio zines, a beautiful, brilliant idea if there was one. Just the fact that these things exist can get me excited. I listen to the occasional radio play (the Neil Gaiman adaptations, mostly) and have the Alan Moore performance pieces, but still, it's lovely that radio (or any media, really) can still surprise you.

Here you’ll find the trailer for Palindromes, the new Todd Solondz film. It’s got a nice poster, too.

I have a new mini-mission, which is to get as many of my friends to read Alan Moore & David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta as I can before the movie comes out in November. Who knows, the movie might be great, but it could also be a flaming turd seeing as it’s the first film from a guy whose biggest credit is assisting the Wachowskis (who wrote the script!). I also disagree with the casting of anyone in the role of the main character V; he’s never shown or named in the book because the point was that he could be anybody. Also, in the film, the oppressive state of things is due to the Germans winning WW2. So beyond the shades of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, it devolves a sophisticated setup (because the crime is that the English people allowed such a fascist state to gain and keep power) into a conveniently palatable Hollywood one, wherein you have an external antagonist. And not just ANY external antagonist, but the one that virtually everyone can hate in unison: NAZIS! The only people who don’t hate them are the Nazis themselves. So that, you know, there can be ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT who the bad guys are. Whereas, in the book, just as much responsibility is placed on the passive masses.

So join my crusade! And we will all end up talking about how brilliant Moore is!

Sorta rule: be quick about it, so other people can read. :)

I've been invited to play some songs of my choosing tomorrow night (Friday) on NU107.5's Gweilo's Hour, which is at 9 PM. If you're not doing anything then, I hope you can tune in. :)

Will be playing some tracks from Bloc Party, The Radio Dept., The Bravery, LCD Soundsystem, The Black Keys, and the new Beck. :) And if we can squeeze it in, Ambulance LTD, The Arcade Fire, Razorlight, and stuff from the new Weezer and shelved Fiona Apple albums.

FREE PORN!

I have no idea what this film is but I want to see it. That's effective packaging and design. Gotta love Criterion.

Been a bit busy, but here's some cool stuff:

The Guardian sent Joe Sacco to Iraq, and this is what he sent in. It's 37MB, but damn worth it. Read it, it's only 8 pages (it's easier to direct-download it first). His brand of comics journalism is really effective. Time commissioned an article from him some time ago, and Entertainment Weekly have been commissioning comics strips from Harvey Pekar and friends. Let's hope this trend continues. Some of Sacco's books are available at Fully Booked.

The Gallery of Bad Album Covers

Top Shelf, purveyor of fine sequential art, have a massive sale until the 15th of March, wherein some of their graphic novels have dropped all the way down to $3. Now is the perfect time to stock up on those books you want. I recommend Abe: Wrong for the Right Reasons, Cicada, The Soap Lady, the Pistolwhip books, The Mirror of Love, Pinky & Stinky, A Complete Lowlife, Blankets, The Barefoot Serpent, American Elf, and any of the Expo and Top Shelf anthologies. And of course, Voice of the Fire (signed at only $40).

I know I give Halle Berry shit, and she deserves it because her film choices post-Oscar have been mostly atrocious, but it was a classy move to show up to accept her Razzie, and she deserves props.

Someone mashed up the Super Friends with Office Space, and it came out quite well. I've never seen Office Space; anyone have a copy I can borrow?

First this, and now this. What's going on here? My brain can't seem to wrap itself around the idea. The twin pillars of Moore's work that first knocked me over are being made into movies, coming out within a year of each other. Although, if you check out the V For Vendetta website, there's a transcript of the recent press conference, and hearing Natalie Portman say she's going to shave her head and lose weight (what, like she isn't malnourished already?) is a sign of hope. And her playing Evey is growing on me, despite my initial mixed skepticism. And they plan to have it in theaters this November, in time for Guy Fawkes Day. It's interesting that both productions have immediately grasped onto the iconic images of the smiley and mask, respectively, for marketing/branding purposes.

And I have to say, hearing Natalie Portman say the words "Alan Moore" kind of made my brain stand up and applaud, using its hemispheres in lieu of hands.

Trailer-wise, there is A Scanner Darkly (late, but I was waiting for the Quicktime version), the new Sin City (with Quentin Tarantino getting billing, despite working a single day [chalk it up to marketing]), the very exciting Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (and kudos to Dreamworks for allowing an unconventional trailer), and really, ALL of you need to see the 3rd, Internet-only trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's lovely, and reflexive, somewhat reminiscent of the Comedian trailer. And in anticipation, I've begun reading the books.

And let's end with the sick and wrong:

PS: Franz Ferdinand are coming to Manila on Neva's birthday, and the Neil Gaiman thing is in July. As usual, these are tentative.