Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

POOR GAMBLE...

Poor Kevin Gamble. Head over to his Naked Sponge site to read more about this dire, vile and godless travesty. Isn't there a law or something against this?

Monday, January 07, 2008

ALAN CROSS (AND ME) ON MUSIC

I listened to another episode of the Ongoing History of New Music last night and the topic I chose was Secrets of Album Cover Art. Very cool insights on lots of artwork including Nirvana's Nevermind, Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, U2's Joshua Tree, New Order's Blue Monday ep (which was so expensive to create that the label and band lost 30 pence for each unit sold. The Blue Monday ep is the top selling ep of all time selling over 3 million copies).

At the end of the program, Alan brought up something interesting--Alan states:

"The music industry continues to undergo some major, major changes--very, very quickly. And as more and more of the business goes digital and virtual, the physical continues to disappear. And look at all the record stores that have disappeared. Sam The Record Man used to run a hundred outlets across Canada and it was THE place to acquire music. They're now down to just two tiny stores and who knows how long they'll last? Tower Records in the United States; gone.

Meanwhile the number of CDs being sold continue to drop. The industry will have us believe that it's all due to piracy and illegal downloads--and that's true it has had an effect--that sort of thing has had a big impact on sales. Things are not the way they used to be back in the day. But at the same time consumers have never ever ever had so many choices when it comes to spending their after-tax money on entertainment. I mean 15 and 20 years ago we didn't have things like DVD's and computer games and X-boxes and Play Stations or high-speed internet or 30-screen cinemas or pay-per-view TV, hundreds of digital channels, on-demand TV, satellite radio, cell phones, ring tunes and millions of other things that have come to the market over the last 10 years. Billions of dollars that used to be available to buy records and cds are now being allocated elsewhere--

Meanwhile, access to music has never been easier or cheaper. I mean, in the old day, you have to save up money, go downtown to the record store, park, find your record, line up at the cash, drive back home, put the record on the stereo before you could actually enjoy it. The record cost you, let's just say 20 bucks, plus the cost of parking and gas and the cost of your time--then you realize that out of the 14 songs on that record you only like 3 of them! The other ones were crap! But it still cost you 20 bucks plus parking, gas and your time. Today, using a computer or a cell phone, you can get just the songs you want for 99 cents each. Add in the sales tax and you're out what? $3.50 and you have everything instantly? If you only have so much money to spend on entertainment which route would you take?

I completely agree with him about the fact that people have more choices on what they're going to spend their money on. If I think about the people that I've been working with for the last 10 years, it is apparent that gaming is more important to people than music. The convenience of buying one's music on-line is truly that--just convenient. But where's the thrill of the hunt?

I used to work about 4 blocks from Zulu Records in Vancouver. It is essentially Vancouver's top source for finding alternative music. At least twice a week, I'd spend my lunch hour perusing the discs, sampling this and that--constantly finding new bands that are doing cool things. I felt like I accomplished something when I would walk back to work with a new CD or two. Now, on-line, I listen a 30-second sample and if I like it, I download it and add it to the other files. There's no ripping open the package and checking out all the artwork. There's no reading the credits and thank-yous while listening. There's little connection to the product as the product is completely intangible.

I don't want to sound like a "record snob" but I really appreciate an album in its entirety. Sometimes the song that moved me to buy the record in the first place turns out to be my most least liked song. I love it when a song I didn't really find catchy or good at first turns out to be my most favourite on the album. When I was a kid I bought The Clash's Sandinista. It was 3 LP's for 20 bucks and I thought to myself "there's gotta be at least 15 cool punk-rock songs on this!" I put the record on and was so upset that in all the 30 tracks, there wasn't one single song that was punk. I listened to the record maybe twice and thought I had wasted my money. As it turns out, this album is now by far one of my all-time favourite albums. There isn't a song I dislike on it. The WHOLE recording kicks ass.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Most people don't know what they like. The like what they hear. That's why Top 40 is so popular because it's just a single or two from a bunch of sound-alikes rammed down lazy people's throats! They wouldn't dare go and hunt for something on their own.

I was at an x-mas party last month and the people there were a little older than me. Not much, maybe 3-5 years older. Everyone there were parents and somehow the topic of music and iPods came up. Pretty much everyone there said that an iPod would be useless for them because "I just listen to the radio" or, "I'd have to figure out how to download something" and the most sad "I don't like anything I hear today--I just listen to the stuff I liked when I was a kid." WHAT? That's what your parents said about the music you listened to when you were growing up. People who listen to the radio and HATE the music they hear settle for listening to the good old oldies of their youth. COME ON! I hate what's on the radio today too but it doesn't mean good music doesn't exist! It means that I have to work a bit harder to find the good stuff! I have to go out there and find it! I have to go on-line and read reviews in the back of cool magazines and hunt for the stuff. To find like-minded friends and hear their recommendations (John Dryden introduced me to one of my all-time favourite bands Tapes 'n Tapes--at first, only one song on The Loon caught my attention. Now the whole CD ROCKS!) and it's such a great feeling to sit down and listen to something completely new and fresh. Blah blah blah...

DUDE, WHERE'S MY CONDOR?

The first episode of Storm Hawks that I directed has finally aired. Watch the episode below to see what all the hub-bub's about! ENJOY!

OH! I also just finished a sound mix on my second episode "Stratosphere" and it really rocks! The sound guys said that it's their favourite episode so far! SWEET!

GOOGLE'S BETA AUTO LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR

click the above image to see my first translation

I just stumbled upon this! I don't know how long it has been out or if I'm the last person to know about it but man, oh man, I would have aced advanced french in high-school if this were available!

The service allows you to translate a multiple of languages such as Spanish to English, German to French, English to Arabic and more. Here's the LINK so you can start languaging more.

DECENT LOOKING PET SUPPLIES


Finally, a cat house (or small dog house) that doesn't look like some scrap-carpeted hobo shack. Check out the entire line from Scandinavian Details here!

I know for a fact that my cat Robot would love this and look smashing in it.

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Retarded Policeman (Episode 4)

Josh "The Ponceman" Perry's little YouTube videos scored him a role in a feature film with Rip Torn, Peter Falk, and Val Kilmer (among others)! When these videos came out I bet $1,000,000 that they'd land him a role in a major feature so you'd all better pay up! Nice work Josh! Congratulations! Now where's my money?

Friday, January 04, 2008

NEW COMPRESSED AIR VEHICLE

Moteur Developpement International is going to launch a new line of automobile this year called "the Air Car" which is a car that runs entirely on compressed air.

Roll up to any service station with a compressed air unit and in 3-4 minutes your car is "refueled" to travel for another 200 km at speeds up to 110 km/h. The cost of one of these puppies is about 3,500 Euros!! How awesome is that? For more info watch this little news clip from the BBC.

OPTIMUS MAXIMUS KEYBOARD

Pre-order your Optimus Maximus keyboard now for only $500 US (approx.). Each key on the keyboard has a small LCD screen enabling it to display whatever graphic you like. The keyboard is fully programmable to not only respond to CTRL, COMMAND, SHIFT, OPTION, ALT, etc. commands but to correspond to whatever program you bring forward. Want all your shortcuts for Final Cut Pro displayed on your keyboard? No problem! Then when you switch over to Photoshop, the keyboard automatically changes its display icons like as if an elf-like magic-wizard was living right inside your keyboard! I'm going to try and steal one because I don't want to pay $500. They're due out in March.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

ALAN CROSS

I am watching The Hour right now and Alan Cross from The On-Going History of New Music is on. If you haven't heard Alan's syndicated radio show, you're totally missing out. Alan is THE MAN when it comes to music (I've posted about his show in the past and you can get to his most recent shows from his official site here). These hour-long radio shows (he's done about 500 of them) range in a variety of topics and he gets to the dirt of any issue. Even if he's talking about the worst band in the world (Red Hot Chili Peppers), the show is engrossing and even, dare I say, mind-blowing. What's great about listening to his shows on-line is that when he plays some music to accompany the topic and it's shitty, god-awful music (System Of A Down or Nickleback) you can just scrub over the song and get back into the meat of the program). Where he gets his information from I don't know but he seems to find out some of the most obscure and interesting information about a band that makes you at least gain some appreciation for them in some way--I still hate the Red Hot Chili Peppers' music, but seeing as most of them should be dead, literally, dead, it's amazing to see that they're still putting music out--see RHCP: Drugs, Despair, Redemption Pt. 1 & 2. Other shows' topics include "Before They Were Famous," "10 Weird Things About Oasis," "Bad Career Moves" (Pete Best), "Drummers Who Made a Difference" (not Pete Best), and "Alt Rock's Greatest Instrumentals."
There's soooo many shows it makes me want to puke! I wish I could download them all for my iPod. Well...
...Alan has just released an audio book that I'm going to have to download/order called The Alan Cross Guide To Alternative Rock and it can be found at all your major sources. At Chapters, one listener's review reads (and I quote...err...cut-and-paste):

Alan Cross is a GOD among the other Rock Gods!!!

WOW! This first volume was amazing and I definately was on the edge of my seat listening to each word that Alan uttered. As a graduate of history I enjoy reading and listening to other historians talk about things and Alan has my attention. He personalizes the muscians that he discusses and makes you feel part of the scene and the life of the muscian! This history is all about the 25 most influecial musicians on the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. Alan encourages us to discuss his picks and even disagree with them, but never assumes that he is right in the decisions that he has made! He is refreshing and open about his opinions and completely unassuming.

He's absolutely right! Count me in!

Friday, December 28, 2007

THERE WILL BE BLOOD: A MOVIE REVIEW

RATING: 3.5-out-of-5 Thumbs Up (or 1.5-out-of-5 Thumbs Down).


Let's just say that there were soooo many good reviews for this movie and that people are nominating it in every possible category including "Best Craft Service" that I said to myself,
"Dammit! I gotta see this movie!" After all, it's got Daniel Day-Lewis who sky-rocketed to the top of my all-time favourite actors since that incredible performance as "Profion" in the epic fantasy Dungeons & Dragons. It was also adapted for the screen by the same man who brought you the incredible comedy Punch-Drunk Love, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Well, let me tell you something. I was torn asunder with this movie. I had no idea which way was up!?!

The director, Philip Seymour Hoffman

First off, for half of the movie, something kept nagging at me; a voice kept saying "something's not right. This is a terrible performance compared to that of Profion..." and I couldn't really concentrate on the movie and I hadn't really been paying that close attention to what was happening and the last time I asked the person next to me to fill me in as to who's who and what's happening I got called a retard so I kept stewing and stewing over and over like a run-on-sentence and that's when it hit me! It wasn't Day-Lewis in the cult-hit Dungeons and Dragons, but Jeremy Irons!

Sir Jeremy Irons gives everything he has as PROFION!

That's what's bothering me! I had made a HUGE gross mistake. What a drag! Sir Jeremy Irons is sooooo much a better thespian than Day-Lewis! Not only has my man Sir Irons done about 3 times the movies than Day-Lewis (so that's proof-in-the-pudding) but "Loser" Day-Lewis has NEVER been on a Dame Edna special (as Teen Wolf's Robert Bateman's character from Arrested Development, Gob would say, "COME ON!")

So now I've missed basically half the movie and the character that Day-Lewis was playing is now like an old man!? HUH? What the hell? I don't recall buying a ticket for Slaughterhouse 5!

Craig Vonnegut Jr.'s classic "The Slaughterhouse 5"

So instead of bugging the stranger beside me to ask what's going on, I decide to stick it out. I might as well watch the credits and see who the craft service person was (which by the way was Graham Sonnenberg, the person responsible for craft service in that ass-fest Grindhouse).
So while I'm watching this old man belittle people left-right-and-centre, I suddenly get one of those "EUREKA!" moments and realize that this old man looks just like Deaner from Fubar!

Paul Spence is giv'erin' it everything he has as DEANER!

What a complete rip-off! Not only did the director vagrantly plagiarize his script from an old book, but he had to steal his main character's look from an old movie!

Anyways, I don't know if it's worth watching or not. I found it disappointing for my own reasons. I highly recommend seeing it if you want to see what this movie's about.

two unknown actors from the movie that I saw

Click on the image below to enlarge this image.

BREW-HA-HA IN BETHLEHEM

In the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (where Jesus was(n't) born) a gaggle of Greek Orthodox priests got into a brawl with Armenian priests. Bats, brooms and fists were a-flying! I wish I could have been there to watch!! That would have been one of the best fights to ever witness. Click on the photo of the religious freaks below to get the straight dope.

Jesus would be rolling over in his grave...wait...he didn't really have a "grave"...wait...he didn't really exist.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

HONKBARN! 4

The latest episode of Todd Ramsay's Honkbarn! is out and it's the best of them yet. I may be a bit biased though considering that my son Kai and I provided some of the idiotic voices. Kai, myself and my 1-year-old watched the episode about 34,000 times this morning. Thanks for making us waste the morning away, Todd.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

WITNESSES SEE "WILD MEN" IN CHINA

Along a river road in Xiangfan (Hubei Province of China), two witnesses say they drove around a corner and saw two "giant" dark "wild men" standing behind some bushes. They say one was approx. 1.7 meters (5'6") and the other 1.4 meters (4'8") and were covered in black fur. Personally, I'm 5'8" and I am not in any way considered a "giant" so I don't know how these witnesses get away by saying these things were "giant."

Investigators have found a series of footprints, the larger prints being 30 centimeters (12").

Get the official story here!



1/2-SQUATCH'S '07 TOP 7+3

Well '07 is almost a wrap and I want to wish everyone a happy new year and a merry x-mas (I don't put the Christ in x-mas). 2007 was a big year for me personally and for this terrible, just re-god-damn-diculous blog of mine. There were a lot of posts (200ish) and a bunch of new readers so I thought I'd take a spin in my time-machine and share some of my favourite personal entries...so here they are in no particular order:

10) My first Halfsquatch interview with the creator of ROM: The Space Knight!9) Though not a personal entry, just a YouTube snatch-n-grab, this pilot episode of Lookwell, starring Adam West made me extremely cheerful.8) My insanely detailed review of the insanely detailed Rocky action figures!7) A ghastly discovery of crypt-master Eddie Van Halen6) My breakdown and explanation of some randomly picked Family Circus comic panels5) The Busey Squid! The photoshop job that I did was a super-rush job but it did the trick by removing gangs from my neighbourhood.4) My rocket-powered electric scooter that I use to commute to work with 3) Oh Snap! I found an "Oh Snap" flow-chart on-line and it directly related to a project that I had been working on where all the characters said "Oh snap!" out of context all the time. Read the comments!2) The Canucks-Bot and part two The Canucks-Bot Mimics Emotionand finally
1) How to make a god damn moose call out of an empty tube of Pringles.0) My "Desert Island" picks which dared to showcase my drawring "ability"...
Honourable mention goes to the Jacobs Creature entry where it sat in Google's coveted #1 link for the search for about 2 weeks (I'm sadly sitting in 2nd place like a turd-hopping fuckface). Thanks to that, my usual average of 45 hits-or-so / day SKY-ROCKETED to 4,500 hits in one day! That's well over 2-double dozens than normal!!

Best of luck to everyone in 2008: The Year of The Future of Tomorrow!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

INTERGALACTIC WAR UPDATE!




Your pal Beadle just emailed his astronomer friend David Gasson (a programmer at the University of Arizona's National Optical Astronomy Observatory ) the link regarding this galactic-feud-of-the-centuries and just got a response!

yes this is legit. Here's the official NASA press-release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/dec/HQ_07280_Death_Star_Black_Hole.html The Times of India put a rather, er, dramatic headline to it, didn't it ;-)? Most galaxies (including our own) have so-called supermassive black holes at their center, and these black holes can power a wide variety of interesting phenomenon including jets. These jets are streams of very high energy particles emitted by matter as it "rubs against itself" while falling into the black hole. The energies involved are absolutely titanic--some of the highest in the universe. It's also typical for galaxies to form in groups and therefore to be able to interact with each other (google "Antenna Galaxy" if you want to see a good example). So it stands to reason that somewhere, sometime, one of these galaxies with jets will cross the path of another galaxy. And that's what's happening here. The universe is a dangerous place. Google "supernova", "hypernova" or "gamma ray burst" if you want to learn more about the many ways we could die ;-). Isn't truth stranger than fiction? Cheers, David

There's a whole wack-load of groovy images and videos HERE!

REAL INTERGALACTIC WAR CAUGHT ON FILM!!

Not joking!! Just a mere 8.2 billion trillion miles away a giant black hole is pummeling a nearby galaxy with an onslaught of "deadly" radiation particles. Check out the article and another.

ALIEN SPACECRAFTS EXIST?

According to Japan's Chief Government Secretary they do! The BBC has more!