Still howling happily about Craig Bevan’s debut CD, I Think We’ve Made It. Missed my last musing on the subject? Here you go.
Better yet, here. This is the first official video, for the CD’s title song. It’s brilliantly directed by Tristan Ofield. Watch it, love the song, buy the CD or the music download. It’s that simple.
Okay, I have to confess that this is a bit of a cop-out this week, as I already wrote about the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine during my Angry BloggerTM days. This is what I wrote:
Reminisced a little this weekend. Does anyone out there remember the Snoopy Sno-Cone machine? Best. Toy. Ever. Of course, they could never sell it today. Kids are so stupid now, they’d probably try to shave off their tongues with the thing. Hell, I know some adults who are too stupid to operate this toy. But what a toy it was.
Loba is always willing to re-examine her statements (even her more incendiary ones), and apparently people aren’t as stupid as I once assumed (either that or corporations just don’t care about the stupidity factor in light of possibly making a buck off someone’s nostalgia kick). Turns out that the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine has been reissued. You can even find it on Amazon.com!
I loved my Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. It was silly and clunky and required way more effort than the end result could ever possibly live up to, but it was still awesome. For those wondering how it worked, first let’s look at the machine, shall we?
See the adorable Snoopy at the top, with the weird red hat? You lift Snoopy up and you see that he’s got an oblong extension attached to his bum. This is what you will use to press down on the ice cubes, which you insert into the shaft you’ve now cleared by removing the Snoopy-topped pestle.
At the bottom of this shaft is a cylindrical piece of perforated metal, sort of like a round cheese grater. This is attached to a crank in the back of the machine. As you press down on the ice with your Snoopestle, you turn the crank in the back, which causes the round cheese grater to slice against the cubes, shaving slivers down into the drum, as shown in this photo.
When you have enough ice shaved for a serving, you can either let it drop into one of the little paper cups that come with the machine, or you can use the snow shovel-shaped scoop seen on the right side of the photo. Once you have a serving in the cup, you can use the little snowman squeeze bottle, on the left of the photo, to squeeze syrup onto the shaved ice (the machine comes with a set of syrup mixes).
Sounds like a big potschke, doesn’t it? Well…it is. Also, minus the metal cheese grater portion, everything on the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine is plastic. Plastic and flimsy. You feel like you might actually crush the entire thing in the process of trying to press down hard enough on the ice cubes. And believe me, you have to press hard. The cheese grater cylinder on my original machine was unbelievably dull. After reading some of the Amazon reviews, I get the impression that it’s still dull.
So why such fond memories? Well, I have always loved Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. One of my first stuffed animals I can remember getting was a Snoopy dog with a bunch of cute little outfits to dress him in: a raincoat, a soccer uniform, a hoodie and blue pants. My first Christmas ornament was one of the Hallmark ball ornaments with a little diorama inside of Snoopy leading a team of Woodstocks to deliver toys for Santa.
I love Snoopy.
I also remember making sno-cones with my mom, which is obviously a memory that is that much more special to me now. I think she might have even enjoyed making these sno-cones more than I did. She was often a big kid when it came to silliness like this. Guess that’s from where I get that silly, eternally-a-kid part of my personality.
Part of me is tempted to get another Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, probably not to use but just for the nostalgia value of having this sitting on a shelf.
Okay, maybe I’d use it. Once or twice. Ooh, I could bring it to work and we could have sno-cone breaks on Fridays!
Mmm, that’s an OSHAlicious event just begging to happen!
I don’t often review movies here at the lair beyond what I’ve been reviewing through my DVDregs project (which I haven’t forgotten about; I just prefer to spend more time reading books than watching movies). I also find that most movies that come down the Hollywood pipeline are such disappointments that I anticipate very little from the movie world anymore.
I was, however, greatly anticipating The Runaways. I’ve been a HUGE Joan Jett fan since I first heard the opening percussion and guitars of “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” And when that gorgeous, gravelly, smoke-saturated voice kicked in, my little Blackheart belonged to her. She is one of the original rocker grrls who still wails like nobody’s business, even at one notch past the half-century mark.
I didn’t learn about her early roots until much later (thank you, Interwebz!), but when I did discover The Runaways, I had another squee attack. This is the band that started the careers of Joan Jett AND Lita Ford?! Close my eyes forever, indeed.
So I began paying more attention to the cinema chat swirling around this one, and that’s when I stumbled upon the teaser poster for this movie.
What a big hot mess of sexual innuendo!
Let’s start with the tagline: “It’s 1975 and they’re about to explode.”
Okay, this could be interpreted in non-sexual ways, especially if you assume that people viewing this poster know who The Runaways were in the music world and subsequently look at this statement from a purely musical standpoint. 1975 was a year filled with some…interesting chart-topping musicians: Captain and Tenille. Glen Campbell. John Denver. K.C. & the Sunshine Band. Barry Manilow. The Carpenters. The Bee Gees. Melissa Manchester.
1975 was basically an easy listening station’s wet dream. But something was brewing under the surface on both sides of the Atlantic…something awesome and raucous and loud. The punk rock scene hit huge in ’75, with the appearance of groups like the Sex Pistols, Blondie, and the Ramones. I won’t try to ramble on anymore about punk rock since I have already pointed out that music knowledge is not one of my strong points (I only knew about these three groups because I like their music).
However, just this little bit of knowledge gives credence to the tagline’s statement that “It’s 1975 and they’re about to explode.” The Runaways were most assuredly nothing like The Carpenters. Their different-from-mainstream sound was ready to explode onto the scene and take that filthy muskrat love hostage. Plus, their arrival on the music scene meant the arrival of the girls to the predominantly boys’ club of hard rock.
Then we get to the poster’s solitary graphic: a ripe, red, luscious, dripping cherry with a lit fuse for a stem.
Again, let’s assume some Runaways knowledge. Probably their biggest hit was the song “Cherry Bomb.” It not only shows up on every Runaways compilation out there, but Jett has included her renditions on both her greatest hit CDs. So here we have the visual representation of the proverbial cherry bomb, made even more prominent by the black background.
[Loba Tangent: I love how this bright red image against the black background is so evocative of the poster for that 1975 movie cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.]
[Loba Post-Posting Tangent: I just realized, after looking at the poster on a monitor with a brighter contrast than the monitor I was previously on that the black background has the overlay of a record (you know, those crazy huge discs that artists now melt and sculpt into bowls?) ghosted into it. Nice touch!]
Then you get the names of the two principal actors, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, in a simple white sans serif, hovering above a roughly spray-painted and smudged stencil of the movie title, in matching cherry red paint. It’s amateurish but bold, which are definitely two things that could be applied to the early days of this band.
Of course, if we remove the assumption that people looking at this poster have any idea of who The Runaways were or what they meant to the music world, this poster drips with sexual innuendo (literally!), just like I originally said. Then again, with lyrics like “I’ll give ya something to live for! Have ya, grab ya til you’re sore!” there’s very little room for interpretation here. The Runaways were fiercely sexual, often referred to as “Jail Bait Rock” for obvious reasons: They were all in their teens or barely 20, with original lead singer Cherie Curie only 15 when she joined the band. Gives that “ready to explode” cherry a whole different connotation there, eh?
Sex sells, and this poster definitely sells the sexuality of this movie and this group.
I’ve already said a lot about the group The Runaways with my poster review. So what about the movie? I cringe a little at calling this movie a proper biopic of the entire group. It really isn’t.
The screenplay is based upon Cherie Curie’s Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway. Curie was only with the band from 1975-77, so obviously basing the script on her recollections isn’t going to give the full story. Also, it’s her memoir so it’s told from her perspective with her take on what was happening. Jett was tapped to provide additional information, to help flesh out the story (which is only appropriate since Jett was the group’s founding member with drummer Sandy West, who died in 2006 of lung cancer).
That being said, obviously the focus of this movie was Curie, with Jett playing a substantial secondary role. I was actually very surprised by this, for two reasons. One, Joan Jett is the most successful musician to come from the original line-up and she was a co-founder, so you’d think she’d be more of the focus. Two, look at the teaser poster: Kristen Stewart received billing ahead of Dakota Fanning. I took this as an indication that her role would be more substantial. I guess it really was a matter of box office pull. Stewart is the bigger name thanks to those shitty twinkly vampire movies the Twilight franchise.
I’ve never read Curie’s memoir but I can only assume that it’s a bit of a weak read based on the overall weakness of this movie’s screenplay. There’s an absence of cohesion throughout the storytelling. Also, the band members who aren’t Curie or Jett get supremely shafted in screen time as well as character development. Case in point: The biggest scene for Lita Ford is brief and tantamount to a hissy fit. Regardless of whether or not this was an accurate portrayal or just how Curie remembered this particular moment, it makes Ford one-dimensional and rather unsympathetic. Again, though, since this is from Curie’s perspective, maybe that was the ultimate goal.
Negatives of the screenplay aside, this movie’s strength resides in those two names on the poster. I still find Dakota Fanning unnerving. She’s literally the oldest young person I’ve ever seen. However, she brings a fierceness and energy to her portrayal of Cherie Curie that is incendiary. Her transformation from mousy waif from a broken home to corseted, drug-addled prima donna jail bait was almost completely believable (hindered only by the obvious and unchangeable truth that Fanning isn’t all these things, so it’s really all pretend in the end).
As for Stewart’s performance as Joan Jett? This is the kind of acting I want to see more of from Stewart. She has an ability to completely immerse herself into a role to spectacular effect. For this movie, Stewart was Joan Jett, right down to the burgeoning of those amazing sexy-growly vocals that are synonymous with Jett’s solo career.
Jett herself is on record as stating that the first time she listened to a recording of Stewart singing one of the movie’s songs, she thought the producers had made a mistake and sent her a recording of herself from those days. Whether this is movie hype hyperbole or not, both Stewart and Fanning nailed their musical impersonations, making their contributions to the movie’s soundtrack excellent additions.
Yes, I have the soundtrack already. It’s actually quite good, a substantial mix of movie Runaways and real Runaways music interspersed with songs from other punk/rock scions like Suzi Quatro (Leather Tuscadero!!), The Stooges, Sex Pistols, MC5, and David Bowie.
Regardless of screenplay flaws, this is one raucous, vulgar, in-your-face, wild ride into the true essence of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” and the brakes are out and there’s no stopping until the cliff appears ahead and we all go plummeting to our rock goddess deaths. But we’ll be so hopped up on whatever pills and booze we can get our hands on, we just won’t care.
I think the only thing that I would have loved to see more of was toward the end, when Jett began to be the dominant character and we started seeing her metamorphosis into the soon-to-be Jett of Blackhearts fame. And when Stewart appeared toward the movie’s end, wearing that fuchsia blazer with the hyper-huge shoulder pads? I squeed a little. And immediately pictured this in my mind:
I love rock-n-roll, too, Joan. Oh, yes, I do.
Of course, we don’t need a biopic on Jett. We know what happened with her post-Runaways. But I wouldn’t complain if Stewart wanted to finally stop hanging out with sparkly vampires and sink her teeth into another Jett-based role. Until then, though, I’ve added The Runaways to my wishlist and am looking forward to firing up the soundtrack for my commute home. Drive me wild…
I don’t even know why I’m listing Batwoman: Elegy as part of the BookBin2010 project other than the obvious reason that it’s a book that I have recently read. However, it is not a book that was for even a nanosecond considered as a possible candidate for donation.
Oh no. This is a book that is going to stay with me for a very long time.
There are some amazing things transpiring in this graphic novel, which is a compilation of the story arc that originally appeared in issues 854-860 of Detective Comics. I don’t want to say much about the story itself, which is brilliantly written by proliferate comics writer Greg Rucka, other than it is expertly crafted to give readers a roller coaster of a ride for the present-day battle with villainous Alice, a psychopathic cult leader who speaks mostly in Lewis Carroll quotes, while weaving in flashback moments that give us a proper foundation for Kate Kane’s transformation into Batwoman.
However, what I find most stunning about this compilation…what I keep coming back to on an almost daily basis since I received my copy from Amazon…is the magnificent artwork by J.H. Williams, III. This is the whole point of the graphic novel after all, isn’t it? To take a powerful story and increase its impact through glorious full-color artistic renderings? Williams fulfills this purpose in mind-blowing ways that are sharpened to even greater impact by amazing color work by Dave Stewart. Simply put, this is a masterpiece of storytelling, artistry, and coloring, making Rucka, Williams, and Stewart an unstoppable Holy Trinity of comic book magnificence.
I want so badly to post some of Williams’s art here, but most of my favorite images from the novel give away far too much if you are as attentive and intuitive as I know many of my denizens are. This is also why I urge you not to do image searches on your own. There are several sites that post some blatantly surprise-spoiling images from Elegy. Do not spoil this one for yourselves, denizens. Trust me on this one.
Final Verdict: Get your own copy of this compilation as soon as possible…because there’s no way you’re borrowing my copy.
Yes, I know that this isn’t Friday. There isn’t anything so impaired about my mental faculties that I can’t tell the days apart anymore. Yet. I simply ran out of time to post yesterday. Technically, however, I thought of this yesterday, so it still counts.
This is another photograph from my aunt’s artsy black and white period, although obviously a little earlier than the Mickey Mouse Ears photo.
This is me with my rocking horse, which, incidentally, my artsy photographer aunt made. I love my artsy aunt. And I loved this little horsie. Loved him so much that one of my earliest memories is of me dragging him across the hall from my room into my parents’ room and locking the door when I left. I wanted him to be safe. Safe from what, I’m not sure. Probably safe from my dad’s irritation when he realized that I had locked their door to protect a wooden pony. Thank goodness for skeleton keys, eh?
My little rocking horse still exists. He made a circuitous path through our family after I outgrew him, spending some time with one of my cousins before finally making his way back to his maker. He now resides in my aunt’s attic. His rockers are a little worse for the wear, having been chewed by the various dogs that have completed our packs over the years. I sometimes have a thought that I’d like to have his head mounted and hung on my wall. Then I realize how creepy and Godfather-esque that sounds. So I’ll be content with this photograph and my silly memories.
This has been bouncing around in my folder of unfinished writings for about 4 years. I know there was something in my life at that time that inspired me to write this character sketch, but I cannot remember it. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with someone exactly like this; he’s more a pastiche of personalities from several different people.
I had a brainstorm a few months ago regarding his “story.” There are still some missing pieces to the puzzle, though, which I have used as an excuse to not even try to write more. Seems that if I spent nearly as much time writing as I do coming up with excuses as to why I can’t write, I’d be well ahead of the game by now 😐
He had never been one given to fanciful thinking. Even as a child, teachers viewed him as highly unimaginative, noting that he found more satisfaction (but never pleasure) in facts than in what he would later refer to as artistic frivolity. Literature bored him. He had no time for make-believe stories designed to stimulate a part of his brain long ago choked by webs of disuse. Music only irritated him with its destruction of silence, and he could not stand the multicolored cacophony of what others considered art.
As an adult, his creative handicap never became an issue. His abundant knowledge of computer language
I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken about this at length here at the lair, but I enjoyed the first season of HBO’s True Blood immensely. I decided to rent the show after learning that it was the latest effort from Alan Ball. For those who don’t know who he is, Ball is the writer of the brilliant film American Beauty as well as the creator of Six Feet Under, which I consider one of the greatest television shows ever created. He also used to write for Grace Under Fire, the sitcom headed by one of my all-time favorite comediennes, Brett Butler.
Needless to say, all I needed to know was that Ball was the creative force behind True Blood for me to immediately hop on board. In fact, I didn’t even realize that the series had literary roots until I was about halfway through watching the first season.
Imagine my delight, then, when I did realize that there was a whole series of novels behind this wonderful show! Author Charlaine Harris has been writing the adventures of Sookie Stackhouse since her 2001 inaugural “Southern Vampire” novel, Dead Until Dark.
I was so excited that I nearly bought the entire series tout de suite. Then my older and wiser (and cheaper) self spoke up and kindly suggested that perhaps I should only buy the first book, just to be on the safe side. And so I followed these wiser words and picked up a copy of Dead Until Dark back in January with a gift card I’d gotten for Christmas. However, the novel became lost amidst my maelstrom of book piles until renting the second season of True Blood jogged my memory regarding its existence in my collection. What better time to read the book that inspired the first season than while watching the second season?
Indeed.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that the acronym for the first Sookie Stackhouse novel is “DUD,” because that’s pretty much how I felt toward it as I was reading it. Harris subscribes to a belief that I simply do not embrace regarding vampires, and that is the belief that they are sexy.
Vampires are not sexy. Vampires are a hair’s breadth away from total death. This truth causes me to suspect that the stink of decay is always about them, more than likely worsening the longer they go in between feedings. Additionally, their personal grooming is hampered by the fact that they can’t really check what they look like in a mirror, and their breath must reek of a fetid, coppery tang that no amount of Scope could ever hope to erase. What part of that description screams sexy to you?
True, Harris’s story is nowhere near as insipid or poorly written as that other vampire series, but I still wasn’t enamored of her take on the vampire mythology. I suppose I prefer my vampires cruel like Keifer or campy like Cruise.
[Loba Tangent: There’s a confession for you all. I love Tom Cruise as Lestat in Interview With the Vampire. I think, however, that’s because I don’t view his performance as most people view it: a failed attempt at depth and darkness. I see it instead as one of the most delightfully campy and subsequently hilarious takes on a vampire that’s ever been committed to film. I mean, come on, how can you not find him funny when he says things like “Evildoers are easier, and they taste better” or “All I need do to find you, Louis, is follow the corpses of rats”? Lestat as played by Cruise was pure camp and vamp, which I admittedly found refreshing among the hordes of dark and brooding vampires before him.]
However, I am thankful to Harris for providing the foundation on which Ball built the first season of True Blood. Ball was able to expand upon and deepen the allegorical aspects of Harris’s tale of outsiders and the fear held by the majority that prevents them from ever finding acceptance in mainstream society. I think this was the strength of that first season for me. It definitely was not the relationship aspect. Again, vampire ? sexy.
Also, there was the joy of Ball being able to expand certain peripheral characters and even add new blood to the character pool from that first novel. I think the character who benefited the most from this freedom was Lafayette Reynolds. Mentioned only in random and disappointingly brief moments in Dead Until Dark, Lafayette becomes one of the strongest secondary players in Ball’s True Blood. As portrayed by Nelsan Ellis, Lafayette is a delicious dichotomy of stereotyping both fulfilled and nullified. He is at times coarse and spiteful, but always with a savory complexity that draws you in for another taste.
Ellis’s portrayal of Lafayette was, in fact, one of the few bright spots from the disappointingly anemic second season of True Blood. I was extremely let down by this show’s second season. Every bit of the nuances and complexities that drew me in with the first season were apparently drained from the show in order to make room for more focus on the relationship tangles of Sookie, Bill, and vampire competition Eric, as well as for a completely ridiculous storyline that I believe was added as a means of keeping the residents of Bon Temps in the mix while Sookie went to Dallas for most of this season. The failure of the Bon Temps story was even more disappointing for this Trek aficionado since it featured the ever lovely and forever Bajoran Michelle Forbes.
Final Verdict: I’m very glad that I’m much wiser or at least much cheaper than I was in my youth. Otherwise, I fear I would be stuck with a whole series of novels to sell on eBay right now rather than simply having one Sookie Stackhouse novel to tote to the thrift store. One visit to Bon Temps and Sookie’s literary world was quite enough for me, thank you. As for True Blood, my interest in revisiting the show is about as dead as all those non-sexy vampires. For me, the magic is most assuredly gone, replaced by too much focus on vampiristic love and lust in Louisiana. Still, I’m glad I own the first season on DVD, and I’m forever grateful to the show for introducing me to one of the most wonderful songs in the history of television themes.
This is the voice that gods summon to soothe their weary hearts.
Remember when I wrote this, denizens? No? I wrote it not very long ago in reference to the wonderful, talented Mr. Craig Bevan.
I still feel this way about his voice, perhaps even more so now that I am the proud owner of Craig’s debut album, I Think We’ve Made It.
Yes, the time has come, denizens. You know that Loba would never give her support to anyone or anything here at the lair unless I strongly believed in what I was writing. False promises are not how I roll.
I very much believe in Craig…and I don’t say that simply because he is my friend. I believe in him because he exudes talent in so many ways, but especially when he sings. Take a listen and you’ll know this truth: He loves his music, and that love shines through in every chord and every lyric.
So, here’s the deal: Head over to Craig’s site and get the free download that he’s offering there. And when you fall as in love with his voice and music as I have, you can go ahead and buy your own copy straight from his site. You can also follow the Amazon link I have up at the top of this post or you can buy it via iTunes. Whatever way you prefer, I simply hope you buy it. You won’t regret it, and you’ll be supporting a wonderful musician and a really groovy guy.
Second step of Loba’s Grand Bevan Plan? Tell your friends, just like I’m telling you. Send this post to them to read. Tweet them. Retweet them. Write about Craig on your Facebook page (or your MySpace page, if that’s how you still roll). Whatever way you choose, I hope you’ll join me in getting word out about Craig and his amazing debut.
This is another flashback from my old blog, incite.thought. Every now and again, I scroll through those entries, looking for links to stories that I’d like to revisit or trying to refresh my memory regarding something I discussed before. Honestly, though, the more I review those entries, the more I’m tempted to delete that blog from existence. I was so angry.
However, every now and then, I did have moments of silliness. Like this one. Listed under the title, “whimsical vacation edition,” this was a random little poem I wrote after photographing the praying mantis that hung out around my apartment every spring. I thought having a praying mantis outside my door was awesome. Jodie, however, had different thoughts on the matter, which hopefully I have properly expressed at the end of this poem 🙂
praying mantis!
offering psalms with alien palms,
your silhouette evangelical.preying mantis!
watchful eye as I stride by,
your posture puritanical.playing mantis!
limbs so strange, colors that change,
your image so fantastical.my dog would love to eat you.
Although I finished Melissa Bank’s novel, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, approximately a week ago, I’m just now getting around to writing this review. That was probably a huge mistake on my part.
I’m finding it rather difficult to come up with what I’d like to say about this book. It’s not that I hated the novel, which is in fact a collection of vignettes either narrated by, focused upon, or somehow related to the book’s protagonist, Jane Rosenal. It’s more a matter of my own failure to retain memories of this book. It seems that, within the past week, the stories have faded and blurred like sidewalk chalk drawings in a summer storm.
The one thing that has prevailed, though, are my thoughts about Bank’s writing style: controlled, concise, and very much indebted to Raymond Carver. I’ve mentioned Carver here before, but only in passing. He happens to be one of my favorite short story authors, mainly for his inclination toward, in his own words, “brevity and intensity.” His prose is beautifully restrained, forcing you to savor each word, let it linger on your palate until you’ve drained it of every meaning, every flavor. Even then, there’s still more to find in subsequent visits to his worlds.
I wish I felt the same about Bank’s debut novel. However, there was very little depth within these stories for me to plumb. There are moments of beauty, wit, and warmth suffused throughout, but the stories themselves lacked the ability to reach me in any meaningful way. I suppose that’s in part due to my innate aversion to “chick lit,” a literary subgenre that sets my teeth on edge.
Does Bank’s debut qualify as part of this subgenre? Perhaps not in the traditional way of writers such as Candace Bushnell or Jennifer Weiner, but, yes, I believe that it has the flavor of chick lit about it…and that’s unfortunately a flavor I do not savor. I do think that Jane Rosenal’s life and love experiences are more universally relatable than, say, Carrie Bradshaw’s jejune exploits (let the flaming begin), but holistically, she was not a character with whom I could or would want to connect.
Final Verdict: The fact that these stories didn’t stay with me means that this book doesn’t get to stay with me either. It was a quick read with enjoyable moments, but if I want a Raymond Carver-esque reading experience that leaves a bit of a stronger impression on my soul, I’m going to go with Raymond Carver.
