Light flow days

Off to Ohio for a bit.
Yeah!
Watch out Cleve, here I come!

Might have time to post. Might not.

Jesus Christ

I'm awesome!

You know the Bible 88%!

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Rock down to electric avenue

Yikes!
Its been a while.
Sorry for that.

Keepin' this one pretty short and sweet. Heading out of town in a week. I'll try to post a few more before, but I've been so focused on saving gold for my epic flying mount . . . and on getting 75 badges (yeah, I nerded all over the place).

So a couple interested readers have been curious about what music I've been listening to lately.

Well, thanks to Thomas over at AM 180, I dicovered Wye Oak. I really like their sound. Good for a rainy day, and lord knows we get enough of those around here.

I also recently picked up Fabriclive 36 mixed by James Murphy and Pat Mahoney. Its a great mix with some choice old skool cuts as well as some nice contemporary tracks with a nostalgic feel. If you need disco, but like your music a bit more quantized and poundy, then you really can't go wrong with this mix.

Booka Shade has a new mix out on Studio K7!'s long-running DJ Kicks series. Now we're nowhere near the series' heyday of Kid Loco, Kruder & Dorfmeister, and Theivery Corporation, but that's not a bad thing. Booka brings their sound and are pushing their label's newer tracks, like Lopazz's "2 Fast 4 U" and they are able to find a nice balance between what Get Physical produces and what K7 brands.

The mix I just can't get enough of these days is Body Language vol. 5 by Chateau Flight. It culls electro basslines and transmutes them into noiz pop and nurave and back again, but the scorcher that puts the whole disc in place is Ceramic Hello's "Sampling the Blast Furnace." If you don't get splinters from tearing up the dancefloor after that track, then you're not listening to it loud enough.

The most disappointing mixes I've listened to lately are M.A.N.D.Y.'s Fabric 38 and Junior Boys' Body Language vol. 6. Both mixes have some killer tracks, but really what sinks them are the tracks the just don't fit. The Junior Boys disc is also marred with some crummy mixing (I do better with my crap program). M.A.N.D.Y.'s mix tries really hard to include so many sounds that it becomes mind-numbing around track ten and flatout aggrevating by track 15.
The Junior Boys fare a tad better mainly because their track selection until the last five tracks are phenomenal.
If you want a good M.A.N.D.Y. mix, grab their At the Controls album (which admittedly is more track than mix oriented, but still a better disc).
And the JB's, as much as I love them, should stick to producing their own brand of crooner meets synth-pop.

Review: Skull & Bones, (finally)

Remember when queer films were small and angry and weird--films like Pink Flamingos and Sins of the Fleshapoids? Yeah, well, I don't exactly remember that time, either, but I do know that somewhere along the way, queer ingenuity gave way to gay mediocrity.

I was pretty stoked when I heard about Hellbent. Then I saw it and was pretty let down with its cookie cutter plot, stereotypical characters, and plodding editing. There were no ideas in that film. Only a meth-head go-go boy could match its vapidity.

Then, last October I was tipped off by now-defunct QTA to the premiere of Skull & Bones which was timed just perfectly with my visit to Tennille and NYC. I went expecting a film on par with Hellbent, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a film with a guerrilla attitude and queer sensibilities. Sure, the production values were far below Hellbent, but the budget was significantly less. And, yes, some of the scenes could have been tightened by a better editor for maximum comedic payoff. But some great ideas and social commentary carry this film--as well as some sick jokes that, if you're like me, will have you in stitches. And one joke in particular that made me a little uneasy--and it takes a lot to make me even slightly uneasy.

The story is pretty simple--two gay dudes who are fed up with being cast aside by the Ivy League upper crust and who are obsessed with serial killers, decide to balance the scales by offing a few of the douchetards in Yale's Skull & Bones society. Its pretty simple for them to infiltrate the ranks--it only takes some liquor and blow before the secret society members are licking and blowing members. The killers fuck, castrate, murder, and zombify the hapless Ivy leaguers and end up with the docile, cock-hungry shell of a Skull & Bones member. As the film ends, their killing spree is still underway.

Skull & Bones is the type of independent film that there needs to be more of today--silly, energetic, gross, and most importantly addressing ideas at which the mainstream is not willing to look. Support truly independent film by dropping 20 bones on a copy for yourself--I did!

Oh shit!

Review of Skull & Bones later today or early tomorrow, I SWEAR!
In the meantime, watch this as many times as possible:

It's for you, it's for me, it's nose tea!

I love my neti pot. I recommend, if like me, you have sinus problems, allergy problems, or just breathing through the nose problems to invest a small amount of money in a neti pot. I do it at night when I get up and in the morning when I go to bed.

Better be good for frak's sake

I'm sure all the queer geek blogs 'round the 'sphere are buzzing about how excited they are for the new season of BSG.
There was a time when I would have been equally as ecstatic, but as they slowly sucked the life out of the show last season and flattened metaphors with their ham-fisted storytelling, my interest waned.
Actually, it more than waned. I lamented the fact that I had told so many people that it was a good show because all of that goodness was thrown out the air lock as the show turned to flashback episodes, inconsequential stories about peripheral characters, inconsequential stories about characters that only got one episode, and the biggest let down of all? The two-hour long TRIAL as season finale. It was snooze city and how the writers abandoned character! Both Katee Sackhoff and Jamie Bamber's limited acting chops were laid bare for all the world to see.

So, yeah, I'll tune in tonight. The season opener can't be nearly as good as last season's (the only really good thing about last season), but the first two years were so good and so nuanced and so prescient that I'll forgive the 3rd season, but they better make it good!

In other news, I will officially be back on Tuesday with the LONG OVERDUE review of Skull & Bones. And I'm going to try to do one feature per week for the rest of the year, normally out on Tuesdays with smaller updates when I have the chance/impetus.