Sdtrk: ‘Cookie bay’ by the High Llamas

In all honesty, I was going to write something and post it, as it’s been a bit, but between visiting the dentist (painful), and being outside in today’s 90°F weather (double painful), the idea for whatever stunning post I was gonna write has been effectively shot several times in the face.
On the upside, however, I bought a new DVD player whilst out-of-doors that I’ve ‘hacked’ to be region-free, traded a number of DVDs in at Thomas Video, our local cult video store, using the credit to order the new Brothers Quay collection DVD, and preordered the R2 DVD of ‘if….’, exclusive to Amazon.co.uk. Why this version over the domestic Criterion one, you enquire? The accompanying free screenplay swayed my decision. Pre-order’d!

More later, perhaps. I’m taking a nap; wake me when it’s genuinely Autumn again

Sdtrk: ‘Menta’ by Sutcliffe Jügend

In hanging out with the lads on a Saturday eve a few months ago, we had to stop at a wine store (really, it was more like a party store with higher aspirations, but they’ll have to work much harder, as they’re located in Macomb county) for some drinkies. In browsing their beverages selection, we’d noticed a couple of metal tubs filled with these bizarre articles:

The Missus thought it tasted awful as well. And technically,
she has no tastebuds

Yes, it is exactly what it appears to be — water in a bag, under the unsettling name of ‘Pure Pouch’. We should be thankful that they didn’t decide to go with what was probably their first name choice, ‘Water In A Bag’, as you really wouldn’t be able to get much more bog-standard than that if you tried. Now that I think about it, yes you could; ever see the film ‘Repo man’? All the grocery stores were stocked with the most generic of foodstuffs and dry goods: every single item was packaged in a white container with a light blue stripe and a generic serif typeface proclaiming ‘Cereal’, ‘Baked Beans’, ‘Tissue Paper’, etc etc.

‘HEY! He’s talking to jooooo’

Pure Pouch’s packaging is far too ornate compared to that sort of thing. That’s a point in their favour, I guess.

What spasm of anti-creativity produced this? Did the boss of Waterco. Inc. suddenly say one day, ‘We’ve got all this water just sitting there in our many enormous storage tanks; what the living hell are we gonna do with all of it??’ *sees employee sipping a Capri Sun, snaps fingers* ‘WE’LL PUT IT IN BAGS AND SELL IT!! BY GOD, THAT’S WHAT WE’LL DO!! IT’S A LICENCE TO PRINT MONEY!!’ Then he fires the bloke drinking the Capri Sun, cos that’d be like having a Pepsi while working at the Coca-cola plant.
It’s like I always say: find a niche and fill it; if there isn’t a niche, make one and then fill it. And yet I bought a Pure Pouch! Technically, I bought four, as they were four for $1. Ehh, that dollar wasn’t doing me any good anyways. But it does remind one of the old saw ‘What does Evian spell backwards?’

Unfortunately, much as you’d expect, the water tastes like plastic bag. Not a positive selling point. Later that eve, I gave one to SafeTinspector, who emptied his at an alarming speed, and I took the other two home in order to study them further. Did I leave one in goshou’s van by accident? *thinks* Do I really care at this point?
Perhaps I’ll freeze the ones I have, relabel them (using a Sharpie), and sell them as Ice Pouch! Ahh, the entrepreneurial spirit is truly unstoppabubble.

O, and in case you’re keeping score, this would be the second time I’ve written about brackish, unappetising water

Sdtrk: ‘Beautiful dreams’ by Twiggy

Good news, bad news, humans. Good news first: I’ve just received my copy of Moon wiring club’s ‘I’m more than a memory now’, from the lovely spectres at Blank Workshop. A number of weeks ago, I’d stumbled across their MySpace site, after having seen it linked on one of the MySpace pages of an artist on the seminal Ghost box label. Much like Ghost box, Blank Workshop’s overall (hazy) focus is that of ‘eldritchtronica’ — samples from obscure British television programmes fusing with various beats and other found sounds. They’re not as sinister as say, Eric Zann, but more than a couple of Moon wiring club’s tracks have an uneasy atmosphere lying beneath their surface, a bit like ‘The Wicker man’ redone as a childrens’ telly programme for the UK; if you can somehow picture that, you’ve got the general idea.
Blank Workshop have a pop-up .mp3 jukebox on their site; you should give it your attention. Especially while you’re checking out their rather esoteric information and history. Quite good!

So the bad news? Hanging out with Derek at Jeff‘s luxurious estates last Saturday eve found us watching the live-action Cutey Honey DVD. A fun film, directed by Hideaki ‘Scruffy Beard and Midlife-Crisis’ Anno, and featuring the rather supple Eriko Sato as the busty Gynoid who fights evildoers, it was exactly as described — a live-action anime movie. But the thing that really captured my attention was the soundtrack for the fillum, as it was very Shibuya-kei / Pizzicato five-esque. So I’m on a goddamned quest to find the soundtrack, and I can’t seem to locate it online anywhere, neither through legitimate means or from our friends the INTERNET PIRATES. I’m debating whether or not to go to Anime Central — what is that, next month? — in order to perform a search-and-destroypurchase mission for that damn Cd. Those tunes were catchy.

Things. I find that I have to buy things quite often. Don’t get me wrong though; I’m not knocking retail therapy at all, it’s just that I wish things were easier to acquire, so I could spend less time hunting them down, and more time acquiring more things. AND THUS THE SERPENT EATS ITS TAIL

Sdtrk: ‘Fluoresences’ by Stereolab

Ironically enough, not two minutes after taking this, I saw a robin crossing the road. It’s a shame my phone’s camera only has 1.3 megapixels, because if it was better than that, I’m sure I could’ve captured a shot of the look of utter bewilderment on his face

See also: Winter’s Back

Sdtrk: ‘Big foot (Mix 2)’ by Merzbow

As far as feature films, 2007 is lookin’ sharp, I’d say! At least, as far as films I want to see — your mileage may vary.

Recently I’d picked up the latest issue of MOJO magazine, as Zip Gun tipped me off that they had a sizable article on my favourite band of all feckin’ time, Joy division. I’d made mention last year about ‘Control’, the film about Ian Curtis and Joy division, but according to both the article and the film’s website, apparently it’s due in the theatres sometime this year, which has me five kinds of excited.

Control – part-financed by Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore – has, it seems won some important fans. The surviving members of Joy Division saw a preview on November 28th, reporting to Mojo that they “very much approve of it and will be backing it 100%”. “Initially the group were disinterested in the film, but at the same time were intrigued and wanted to get involved,” says [producer Orian] Williams. “When we first met them backstage at a gig in Liverpool in 2005, Bernard said ‘Just have some fun with it.’ We did and the finished movie is amazing.”
quoted from this article

Another rather nice aesthetic touch is that director Anton Corbijn has filmed ‘Control’ in black and white, which is entirely appropriate. You can check out a segment from a Dutch news programme (it’s subtitled) where they interview Corbijn here on the Tube of You.
Hearing that not only is Corbijn creating this — with the blessing of the other 3/4ths of Joy division — but it’s based off of the book ‘Touching from a distance‘, which was written by Ian’s wife, Deborah, is quite reassuring, as letting Hollywood getting its grubby little hands on a story like Ian’s would be sacrilege. But then, a band like Joy division wouldn’t even register on Hollywood’s radar, thankfully…

The other one that has my interest level at Maximum Pique would be ‘Factory girl’. I think it was a little over a year ago when I’d first heard mention of this; it’s a movie based on Andy Warhol’s most beautiful and doomed superstar, Edie Sedgwick. Supposedly, production was held back for a bit due to various factors; one of them being that Bob Dylan was miffed about Hayden Christensen’s character (who’s based on Dylan and named either ‘the Musician’ or ‘Folk singer’, depending on what you read) as he and his lawyers believe the film infers that he was responsible for Edie’s death. Not only that, David Weisman, the director of her fictional-but-not-really film ‘Ciao! Manhattan’, apparently has issues with the film, and interestingly enough, Lou Reed, Edie’s friend during the Silver Dream Factory years, is quoted as saying that the screenplay is ‘one of the most disgusting, foul things I’ve seen – by any illiterate retard – in a long time‘. Lou is often cranky. Hard to imagine, but it’s true!
It’s pretty well established that among other reasons, Dylan was one of the presiding factors in causing Edie to leave the Factory crowd. Edie was repeatedly cast in several of Warhol’s films, but she — along with other Factory members — would often have to chase Andy down in order to get paid for their time, and Edie thought she’d be better off in the non-underground film circuit. Dylan just happened to visit the Factory at the right time, and persuaded her to leave.
I’ve never liked Dylan. He’s a mutterer, and I don’t like mutterers.

Personally, I was hoping they’d cast that luscious wee Keira Knightley as Edie, but going by the pictures, Sienna Miller makes a rather good Dopplegänger. Surprisingly enough, Guy Pearce seems to make for a good Warhol as well. As long as it reasonably sticks to her life and history, I’ll be happy…
Interestingly enough, Edie died of a barbiturate overdose exactly one year before and one day after my birthday. ‘Factory girl‘ is also due in the theatres sometime this year

Technorati tags: Joy division, Ian Curtis, Anton Corbijn, Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, Factory girl

Sdtrk: ‘Happy, that’s me’ by Little Frankie

ATTENTION HUMANS: MontiLee, known to the bloggerverse (I despise that word) as Penda, has shut down her long-running Diner after seven acerbic years. Now, she’s helming a new site, called ‘little black duck‘. Go check it out! Or I will cut you.

That is all

Sdtrk: ‘Speedlearn broadcast’ by F. Peters

I swear to christ, I’m gonna build a TARDIS, go back in time, and flat-out murder whoever invented the flu with my bare and twitching hands. This is utter bullshit. Not only have I missed two days of work — under normal circumstances, that’d be something I’d be crowing about, but I like having money — and worse, I’ve not showered or shaved in two days, so I resemble some fucking hippie filth. Normally, I wouldn’t admit that sort of thing publically, but I’m brimful of Alka-selter/Halls/some generic anti-flu drug, so I don’t fucking care. Frankly, I’m surprised taht Im lucid enugh to speling as goood as I am.
So to everyone I need to Email back — you know who you are — give me a couple of days to remember how to spell my own name, and I’ll get back to you immediatement. Okay? Okay!

In the interim, I’ve just downloaded all three volumes of the soundtrack to ‘The prisoner’ from X-Y-Z Cosmonaut’s CosmoBlog, one of those crazy .mp3 blogs that I scour on a daily basis. One of my favourite episodes was ‘The General’, the one with the supercomputer with the subliminal learning technique that it televised to all the inhabitants of the Village, and I recall that tune that was played during the educational broadcasting was very very ace, as it was like all of Broadcast and Ghost box‘s output condensed into 42 seconds. So I’ve been playing it over and over for the past hour! And now you can hear it, too! FOREVER

Also, I want a Nissan Figaro, just like Sarah Jane Smith drives.

Okay? Okay! Back to lying down! But first, let me stumble over to the bog and puke some more WOO YAY