You know, the last thing I want to see in the morning is Bud Light. There’s a number of reasons for this – I’d rather drink battery acid with a squeeze of lemon, it’s part of the Blanding of America, and it’s amazing how stupid people get when it’s available in quantity. In the subway this morning, I was confronted with a car filled with Bud Light posters. We’re talking 22 ugly pieces of propaganda extolling the so-called virtues of this piss and its low-carb way to get hammered. Or something. I have no clue what they think they’re talking about, since the phrase “Drink for the taste” was used and when it comes to Bud Light, that’s such a complete non-sequitur.

I already need a drink. It’s 8:49 in the morning.

Kill Bill Volume 2. Wow. The glorious mass of violence in the first is replaced with a true emotional throughline for The Bride, her name is revealed, and you get to see some wicked kung fu with Gordon Liu. Oh, Lynn and I laughed and cringed and had a ball of it. We’ll be seeing it again in a good theater – we had to go to the Ghetto Assembly Mall Loew’s Deathplex to get a seat on Friday. Now, I really should get around to Hellboy. I’m just so damned wary of comic book movies, even with everyone screaming over the movie’s goodness. Bitter over Daredevil, me? No way.

How To Choose Which CD To Listen To, BeaucoupKevin Style.

1. Look at those damned things. Stacks of them, shelves choked with them. Why, oh why, are you such an addict?

2. Think to yourself “Oh, hey, maybe I wanna hear that remix by [FILL IN NAME OF PRODUCER].” and try to find it.

3. Find the single, realize that someone else entirely did that remix.

4. Put it on. Nod along for a bit, get bored. When it’s done, wonder why you bothered.

5. Go back to 1.

Step 2.5 could also be “Knock over random stack. Curse.”

Little shopping expedition last night after dinner. I picked up Kill Bill Volume 1 to make sure I was completely up to speed for this weekend’s cinematic orgy of violence, the new CD from Alpha (from last night’s listening of the first 9 tracks, it’s really good), and the latest collection from Ninja Tune.

On the last item, I have this to say: “1958″ by Skalpel? Mmm…that’s good jazz.

You should probably see Big Shot’s Funeral if you like movies that humorously explore branding, death, and cinema. I enjoyed it quite a lot, even if it was about 20 minutes too long.

File Under: That’s it. I fucking give up. We deserve the asteroid, the tidal wave, the Gojiro attacks, whatever is flung at us. The human race is begging for it.

It’s fitting that William Hung is going to enter the albums chart with a bang.

When figures are released Wednesday, industry insiders expect the ‘American Idol’ reject to debut in the top 30 with sales between 30,000 to 40,000 copies.

Go Here. Vote for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the “Action” category. Friends of mine might benefit from your largesse.

Buy my Robotech DVDs, suckers!

Appendum: SOLD to my man Absinthe in Cali.

Last night, Sarah calls me from Kansas. She’s in the car with Paul, travelling all over the country for the sort of thing that a photojournalist would travel all over the country for. (Yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition. Eat me.)

“Hi, Kevin!”

“Hi, Sarah!”

“Was Superman’s hometown based on an actual place in Kansas?”

“Well, Sarah, Smallville wasn’t officially placed in Kansas until the John Byrne relaunch of the character in the mid-80s. Before then, it had been a sort of nebulous place, maybe upstate New York. And the movie’s Kansas scenes were filmed in Canada.”

“Oh. Well, that’s one less stop for Paul to make!”

I have the feeling that her being the navigator is ensuring that the whole trip is taking an extra two or three days. I better get something neat and shiny back from the road.

Boxer Hopes He Can Make Money Punching Things In Retirement

CHICAGO�Shortly after announcing his retirement, heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, 38, said Monday that he hopes to continue to make money punching things. “I have a few other skills, but I’m probably best at punching,” Lewis said. “Cows, computers, sheets of glass�if the price is right, I’ll punch it good. I may be retired, but I’m still a powerful good puncher.” Lewis added that he would also be willing to hire himself out by the hour for displays of fancy footwork.

(Swiped without any permission whatsoever from The Onion.)

So, I was looking at TV Guide (shudup, I was on Cape Cod and bored because it was raining) and they have this pretty decent “Have You Seen These Classic Films?” article. Two movies that sound like great fun are listed: The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit (ok, not really fun, but it’s Gregory Peck, and me like the Peck (SHUT UP, JOSH)) and The Tall Target (featuring Dick Powell trying to prevent the assassination of Abe Lincoln).

I check Netflix, Amazon, whatever. Of course they’re not on DVD. There’s another section – “This Week’s Spy and Private Eye Movies” and well, I do the same thing.

Murderer’s Row with Dean Martin singing and making it with Ann-Margret while matching wits with evil criminal mastermind Karl Malden? Nope. Not on DVD. Tony Rome featuring Frank Sinatra as a Miami detective? Ditto.

This week, only the possibility of owning my own copy of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House in the near future cheers me up. And maybe seeing Hellboy.

*** eXpress message received from Jet Jaguar at 10:50 ***

>Grrr. Stupid weather.

>

>If only we had a weather god who was drunk all the time and we could be mad

>at him but not really beacuse, you know, he’s drunk.

Aaron in LA has started a LiveJournal. Christina (affectionately, I think) calls me her media curator, and Aaron is probably mine. His eidetic memory fascinates and frustrates me at the same time – he remembers slivers of information that I’ve lost because that particular bit was reallocated to hold the running time for the Jam And Spoon remix of “Young Offender” by Pet Shop Boys (9 minutes plus a bit) or something similarly useless.

I spent the Zombie Jesus Holiday on the Cape. Good food, decent company. Picked up some Tarzan paperbacks at Reed’s Books in Harwich and was sorely tempted by their rebound hardcovers that reproduced the original cover style perfectly. (Other, less interesting, things purchased include laundry bags, some discounted Peeps, and shower curtain liners.) Finished another big dumb Star Trek novel, too. I’m a sucker for Captain Sulu. George Takei should read the phone book to me. Someone call him and have him do that. (Quick note about the book: some really groovy science fiction concepts found themselves in what would be a standard too-heavily-edited Trek novel, making it a lot more palatable than anything else that Paramount has flung at us lately.)

ChristinasTopSecretAIMLogin: Amazon has a free download of Larry Lessig’s Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity going on right now : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200068.

Do it. Download it.

Kristin actually sat through a movie last night! Wild Style is a fascinating document of urban life in New York City in the very early days of rap and hip hop. The acting is below the very low bar set by Kevin Smith’s ensembles, and the script seems to be missing things like conflict, plot, and resolution, but that rides secondary to the setting.

The South Bronx in 1981 was not a pleasant place to be – Doug mentioned something about it being Morning In America, and I responded that it certainly wasn’t Reagan’s America that was being shown. Wild Style has long, lingering shots of buildings in the middle of the decay process, sidewalks choked with weeds, and broken-down citizens just trying to make ends meet. In the middle of this squalor, hip hop and graphitti break out as the primary form of expression for the generation. Seeing early groups like the Cold Crush Crew and the Fantastic Five rap on a basketball court gave me a real charge, as this was the first music besides Kraftwerk that I heard as a kid and went “WOW” over and these were the guys who first made it happen. (My mother reports that I once danced to “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang, but I blame cocaine, the bane of my preschool years.)

Totally worth checking out – I bet TsaiCourtney owns three or four copies of this,as she’s the dopest person I know. Ignore the acting and script and concentrate on the feel and what this movie captures.

File under “OH NO, YOU D’IN’T!” or “Oh, SHIT, this ain’t good.”:

A US jet bombed a mosque in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killing at least 40 people inside on Wednesday, report agencies.

‘We wanted to kill the people inside,’ Marine Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne told reporters.

Bobby Kennedy once said “Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.” It appears that message is lost in this campaign. Yes, the cleric in Fallujah is, no doubt, more than a bit of a prick, but to bomb a mosque? What’s next? Day care centers? Jesus. (No pun intended.)

Michael did it, so am I, too.

Say you were meeting a new person — blind date, new friend, who knows — and you wanted them to have some idea of what kind of person you are, and who you are. But you can’t actually tell them in so many words. Instead, you have to give them a box with a dozen things in it for them to look at/read/listen to/taste/etc. What would you put in the box? A copy of your journal or a link to your LJ would be the same thing as telling them directly, so that’s not allowed.

Two burned CDs.

The first with two tracks each by Underworld, Depeche Mode, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Sparks, Oliver Lieb, and earlier (non-shit) BT.

The second would have two tracks each by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimmy Scott, Coldcut, The Cinematic Orchestra, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra, and Roots Manuva.

Copies of the following books:

American Tabloid by James Ellroy.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

The Penguin Guide To Jazz on CD

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller.

A glass bottle of Coke Classic.

A photo of Kristin, taken while she slept. (She so hates that I have that.)

A bottle of Knob Creek or another suitable bourbon.

The classic Star Wars trilogy on DVD. If I had to pick one, it’d be Empire.

An MBTA pass.

A LEGO minifig.

As a point of order, only high-ranking officers of the Merry Marvel Marching Society are allowed to call him Hornhead. Enlisted men and civilians should address him as Boy, what the fuck was with that godawful goddamn Ben Affleck movie, man? I wanted to beat the director’s MOTHER with my bare hands.