Month: December 2004

new spoon song, sea ray

An unreleased song that may intrigue you: The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine (live), by peerless Austinites Spoon.
Stolen from homemade indie-rock popularity contest. Note that, in the collective opinion of our nation’s blog critics, Sea Ray is the 35th best band in America today. This sets a new record for Highest Rank For A Band Whose Members I Used To Hang Out With In College. It also sets a record for Highest Rank For A Band Whose Bass Player Suffered Through A Seven Mary Three Concert In Cleveland With Me.

wordy wordy wapo

I love the Washington Post, and I know at least one of its copy editors pops in here once in a while (hi, Doris!). But heavens to Betsy, how did this neverending sentence make it into today’s paper?
“The Redskins (2-5 at home) were trying to prove their offense could thrive on consecutive Sundays and that their season-long problems were behind them, and Ramsey, running back Clinton Portis and wide receiver Laveranues Coles (12 catches for 100 yards) all provided quality play but not enough long plays or points to win (Washington is the lowest-scoring team in the NFL).”
That’s three parentheticals and about a gazillion clauses. People, just ’cause you don’t want to get all Hemingway doesn’t mean you have to get all Faulkner.

pantera tattoo story

Here’s my first ever story about a suburban tattoo parlor — as well as my first ever story to feature extended Pantera references.
(I’m forced to link to my own site, clipfile.org, because The Powers That Be at dallasnews.com have decided they don’t have to post every story to the web site during the holidays. Because, you know, people don’t like to read as much during Hanukkah.)

what the fuck is indie rock?

True conversation, had a couple hours ago with a dude getting a Pantera tattoo in a suburban strip-mall tat parlor:
Him: So, man, you listen to a lot of metal?
Me: Not really. A little, but not much.
Him: So what kind of music do you listen to?
Me: I dunno. A lot of indie rock.
Him: Indie rock? What the fuck is indie rock? Is that like [sings in a high, “gay” voice] “La la la la la la”?
Me: Sorta.

haidl haidl haidl

Man, with all the Orange County blogging I’ve been doing lately, I should start watching The O.C. or something.
Remember the Greg Haidl case, the O.C. teen rapist of unconscious underaged girls who has thus far gotten off, thanks to his lawyer’s campaign of turning a near-coma rape victim into a wannabe porn-star “slut”? (Search the archives for “haidl” to find past entries.) Well, the OC Weekly has been doing its usual Menckenesque work fighting the good fight. Find all its recent Haidl stories here. Among the highlights:
– Skeezy (and self-proclaimed “World Famous”) lawyer tries to scam rape victim, says his own past habits of molesting underaged girls (while a prosecutor!) is besides the point.
– The shrink who said Haidl was so “depressed” he shouldn’t be jailed for causing an accident while underaged drunk driving has himself been accused of screwing his suicidal patients (and paying for them to have boob jobs), trying to hire a hit man to kill his wife, and prescribing narcotics to his drug-addicted business partner.
– Haidl getting tasered for throwing a tantrum when jail officials tried to stop him from giving candy to a child rapist.
The weekly also, wisely, named Haidl’s chief attorney — Joseph “Slut! Nut! Pathological liar! Wannabe porn star! Tease! Mess! Master manipulator! Compulsive liar!” Cavallo — O.C.’s Scariest Person 2004.

more steve rocco

More Steve Rocco: Click the image of the mystery man in the right column here for video of the man in action. I had no idea he looks so much like Smithereens-era Pat Dinizio. Or perhaps Monkees-era Michael Nesmith gone to seed.
Also, you’ll get to hear an extended version of Rocco’s board-meeting remarks, including his thoughts on industrial slavery. Also, you’ll get to see how hilariously bad Los Angeles local TV news is.
Plus there’s this story, reporting Rocco’s first interview with the press, which contains some of the funniest non-fiction ever to appear in print:
Rocco spoke in veiled terms of his beliefs, saying that to understand them one must first read a book he self-published in 1992, “Behind The Orange Curtain: Secret Chronicles and Public Record Accounts of Corruption, Murder and Scandal of Corporate and Political California.”
Rocco said the book explores the effects of his arrest and conviction in 1980 for stealing a packet of sausages and a few rolls of film from a grocery store.
The incident, which he called a setup, had a big impact on his life, Rocco said. At the time, he says he was working as a substitute teacher in Orange Unified schools as well as other districts. His hopes to be hired as a full-time teacher in Orange, he said, were thwarted because of that arrest and another three years later on charges that he stole record albums from a library.
“Revenge,” he said, is too strong a word to describe his goal

steve rocco, crazy school board man

Remember Steve Rocco, the seemingly crazy man who somehow got elected to an California school board seat without ever appearing in public? Well, he was sworn into office yesterday, forcing him to make himself known.
And guess what? He’s crazy after all!
With camera shutters whirring, Rocco used his first chance to speak as an elected official to offer a rambling, agitated, five-minute diatribe that summarized his belief that Orange County is controlled by a cabal of corrupt politicians, judges and officials.
In Italian, he paid homage to his late father. Then switching to English, he said, “I am and always have been the anticorruption candidate,” adding later: “We are living in a time of secret organizations, living in a time of corruption and, most of all, living in a time of dictatorships.”
From the outset, Rocco signaled that his would not be the usual tenure. Dressed in black, he never removed his dark sunglasses or ski cap.
Personally, I wonder if he’s the same Californian Steve Rocco who put together this site dedicated to advancing the theory that Andy Kaufman faked his own death. The most recent entries dance around the subject, but provide no real answers. Kaufman and Rocco certainly have similar performance-art overtones.

west coast hip hop, represent

Pitchfork reviews the new Stones Throw compilation today, and while I haven’t heard it, you should probably get it. Been getting into a lot of West Coast indie-leaning hip-hop lately, and Peanut Butter Wolf is one of the genre’s masters. (Along with the rest of the label: Madlib, Madvillain, Jaylib, Yesterdays New Quintet, etc.) Check out Wolf’s My Vinyl Weighs a Ton on eMusic if you’re a subscriber.
Speaking of West Coast instrumental hip-hop, I finally picked up a copy of Keepintime, a DVD document of a good idea brought to fruition. A bunch of L.A. turntablists (Cut Chemist, Shortkut, Numark, Madlib) track down the old L.A. funk session drummers of the ’60s and ’70s whose records they love to sample (Paul Humphrey, Earl Palmer, James Gadson). Then they perform live, with the drummers backing the effects wizards. The music never quite lifts off into greatness, but it’s a very entertaining journey along the way. I’m really looking forward to Brasilintime: Batucada com Discos, a similar project the same DJs did with classic Brazilian percussionists, which should be out on DVD shortly.
Finally, if you like this sort of music as much as I do, you really can’t be without In Tune and On Time, the newish DVD/CD set from the king of the scene, DJ Shadow. While a live video recording of a DJ performing sounds boring, the music is stellar, and the visuals are intermittantly hypnotic.
If you want to see what Shadow’s listening to these days, he wrote about the subject a few months ago in the NYT.