GOOD THINGS:
I recently had a CD player installed in my car (twenty quid on eBay! It ain’t pretty, but it works), and boy am I getting my money’s worth out of it. This week’s playlist includes:
‘Thunder, Lightning, Strike’ by the Go! Team
I think the exclamation point after ‘Go’ really sums up this band. ‘Thunder, Lighning, Strike’ makes me imagine that the Go! Team are in fact a team of action heroes – possibly puppets, ‘Fireball XL5’ style – and this album is the soundtrack to their adventures. It’s full of big adrenaline-pumped horn fanfares and clattery-smashy percussion: hooray! And the vocal tracks are shouted in unison (with lots of echo) like cheerleading chants (which is appropriate, as the production is so rough it actually sounds like the album was recorded in a school gym). A lot of the songs make me think of 1970s TV themes; and the last track on the album is TOTALLY a closing-credits song, with its wistful harmonica and down-home banjo plucking: it’s the song that gets played when the crazy adventure is over and the dust is settling and Our Hero turns to His Girl and says, “Come on – let’s go home.” And they walk off hand-in-hand into the sunset. Through a corn field. I get a lot of really specific images in my head when I listen to music. I’m sure that’s symptomatic of something.
‘Now I Got Worry’ by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
This album makes me feel like a motorbike-riding badass. (As I drive my little red Volkswagen Polo – seriously, could I have a pussier car?) It had been quite a while since I last listened to this CD, and I startled the pants off myself by cranking it WAY up straight away, forgetting that the first track starts with a deafening, prolonged, feedbacky scream. Oh Jon! I do love you and your sleazy Elvisy neighing. Nobody but nobody says “baby” or “yeah” better than Jon Spencer. The Blues Explosion always makes my top five list just because you have to love any band that gives you a strong urge to drink bourbon and get in a fight. They are a delicious hot noisy mess of blues clichés, with the worst, and at the same time the best, guitar solos I have ever heard. All hail.
NOT-SO-GOOD THINGS:
I love me a good supernatural thriller. Besides noir, supernatural thrillers are my very, very, very favourite genre, and I honestly think The Exorcist is one of the best films ever made. I never get tired of watching Linda Blair jam that crucifix into her crotch – and really, how could you? Tragically, however, good supernatural dramas are desperately thin on the ground. Besides The Exorcist (and the other obvious classics, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Don’t Look Now), I could probably name about three that don’t completely, utterly suck. Nevertheless, I will watch just about anything with a ghost/haunting/exorcism/levitating article of furniture in it, desperately hoping to have the holy bejeezus scared right out of me. This past week I’ve watched two supernatural thrillers! And they both fucking sucked. Ho hum.
1408
It’s actually worth watching this movie solely for the scene where John Cusack attacks the mini-bar, but apart from that moment of (unintended) comic relief, this film is a soporific borefest. Both John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson are on that list of actors who somehow manage to exude an aura of coolness despite not having done anything in years that isn’t downright embarrassing. And in the name of everything holy, why do they keep making films out of Stephen King’s books? Christ, after Tommyknockers they should have burned him in effigy. Here is the gist of 1408: There is a hotel room! And it is evil! Because…because it just is! Nobody has ever survived for more than an hour inside the room! John Cusack decides to spend the night, despite the warnings (can you imagine!), and is driven to the edge of madness! Black slime oozes from walls! His dead daughter shows up! Along with a parade of other clichés! The idea is that The Mean Room forces you to relive the same tortures over and over until you kill yourself. Much like Stephen King’s writing career.
The Unborn
Boy, did this suck. I knew it would suck, but I thought that it might suck in an amusing or diverting way, and if worst came to worst, I would at least enjoy the spectacle of Gary Oldman playing a rabbi. But not even his hilarious accent could distract me from the despair-inducing black hole of Suck. The premise of the film is that the main character, who is played as woodenly as a wooden thing made out of wood by I Don’t Care, is being haunted by a malevolent entity called a Dybbuk (insultingly plundered from Jewish mythology), who tried to enter the body of her twin brother when he died in utero, and is now trying to force its way into the world through the gaping holes in the plot. I tried to salvage some entertainment from this debacle by playing “Who’s Going To Snuff It Next?”, but it was much too easy to stop me from drifting into a twitching, gaping torpor. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful stuff.
SHOP TALK
I’m migrating my Etsy shop from graphic design services to printables – collage sheets (ATC/ACEO backgrounds, clip art for decoupage and jewellery, etc), scrapbooking sheets, thank you/note cards, anything you can think of to download and print. I really liked doing custom graphic design, but with my work situation I need to concentrate on finished products I can sell as-is – after I spend eight hours in an office I just don’t have the energy to focus on clients’ needs. BUT, I usually do have a little energy to spare on making really fun graphics in Photoshop, like this set of vintage ladies at 3″ x 1″, perfect for microscope slide jewellery.
