77 Wars

this is a post i left on espn.com in regards to this article about the current seattle supersonics relocation mess…

david stern is a joke. always has been and always will.

there is something to be said about trying to keep a professional image in a professional sports leaugue and when it comes to disciplining guys who do things to harm the games i am all for it, but stern always seems to have a knack for doing it the wrong way. and when it comes to this seattle situation, HE is the one dragging the league into the mud.
clearly bennett is g##d#mned liar, but here is david stern, standing there holding his hand, saying “oh, bennett didn’t do anything wrong, it was just his friends and business partners”. which is a pathetic excuse on top of being a pathetic lie that anyone over 8 years old could see right through. stern is bad for basketball and a terrible leader. leaders are supposed to unify the people, not pit owners against the fans and players and cities they live in. stern cares about money, stern does not give a s### about basketball. he has no passion for sports, he has a passion for control. he is a businessman 1st, 2nd and 3rd, he is a businessman and nowhere in his tiny little brain is there a basketball fan.
stern is a lawyer and a liar and is clearly only concerned with reaching into the pockets of the owners and “stroking” with both of his hands, the soft, supple “egos” and wallets within.
he’s pretty much the george bush of sports (former olympic anti-doping committee chief dick pound could be his dick cheney)

don’t read this if you do not want to read something that alludes to plot lines and events in this book or film.

i recently read this book and then within a week or so i watched the film. i must say that i was impressed with what the coen brothers did with this story. it seemed like all of the images i had in my mind set right on top of what i watched in the film and there wasn’t much that didn’t fit. the one thing i disliked in the film was woody harrelson. i’ve liked him in other films, well, at least in natural born killers and kingpin (well, maybe i don’t like him that much, but i don’t hate him), but he seemed awkward, out of place and i feel it should have been someone a little more, uhh, serious i suppose.

the book made more sense when it came to what the story meant because of the interweaving of the sheriff’s journal entries, so if you like this kind of bleak shit, then go get the book and read it. it is worth your time and can probably be read in a day or two if you’ve got the time.

overall it seemed to me that mccarthy states here the nature of man. and that nature is destructive on one hand, but also can be sympathetic and, i want to say maternal. of course, death is a major theme and it’s inevitability seems to be a point as well. while the changing times catching up with a sleepy kind of desert and a more traditional mindset amongst the people is very obviously presented, it didn’t feel like that was why mccarthy was writing this story. maybe the character chigurh is just representative of man’s self-destructive nature and death and that no matter what you do to it, it will not ever stop.

i will most likely come back to this post and update as i think about it a little more, but i’m off to meet a friend for dinner and beer at a new place over on heliotrope. if it’s worth a damn, i’ll post something about it here. if you were into this film and/or book, i highly recommend that you read “the road” also by cormac mccarthy.

    seven and a half hours into an all-night IT shift and it is 630 in the morning. i am waiting for a few gigs of data to migrate to their new server. i’ve been listening to my bloody valentine’s “loveless” and mono’s “gone”. i suppose they are post-punk and post-rock respectively, but i often have a hard time pigeon-holing a group into one kind of convenient genre. besides, almost any music worth listening to is comprised of many elements from outside of whatever category they end up being filed under. also, i learned some basic permissions settings in unix tonight and i like how part of this command looks…  -R 777 . it’s cool because it is used to change permissions to allow full access by everyone.

these two records seemed incredibly well suited to play through the very early, dark morning hours. if you are reading this, most likely i know you and probably have no need at all to say anything much about my bloody valentine. if you haven’t heard “loveless”, go buy it, it is incredible and it’s one of those records that i wish i had been given in 1991 (slint’s spiderland is another one i’d go back in time and hand to my 14 year old self, not to mention i would also have to kick my own ass, while of course violating some sort of time-space law). it is kind of a beautiful wall of white noise and melodies, it is melancholy and hopeful and there is no fucking around. the album just starts off with energy and when you turn it over, the b-side gets right to work as well.

   mono is undoubtedly always going to be compared to explosions in the sky, but they just keep getting better. a bunch of japanese dudes from japan. if you know explosions in the sky and have seen friday night lights then perhaps you see how explosions is a great soundtrack for what actually turned out to be a pretty darned good movie even though it’s about high school football in texas. mono is better suited for a well made war film not directed by some scum sucking shit like michael bay. of course it works pretty well to just put the records on and listen to them. “gone” is a five-sider and pressed on some extremely beautiful, heavy vinyl with a really cool etching on side six. all of the songs were recorded between 2000-2007 and only one of them was not recorded by steve albini, so the engineering is damned sharp. these guys churn out a lot of guitar, but they use a wider array of instruments than explosions, who stick to drums/guitar/bass, though both bands use a lot of effects. mono also stays darker than explosions, who tend to not only have that quiet/loud dynamic throughout everything they write, but there is everything from bliss to oblivion present… and since i keep mentioning them, i’d advise you to take a listen to explosions in the sky’s “the earth is not a cold dead place”. both mono and explosions put on great live shows.

hey look at me! i have a website. i don’t even know what the fuck i’m talkng about. i can even mispell shit and totally ignore it.

the explosions site has one free mp3 when you go to the album.

on temporary residence limited

on creation records

also on temporary residence

an unfinished entry from summer ‘07…

so i get down to sea level records this morning a little early and turn on all of the computers and lights, go around and open the gate and then i sit down to read my e-mail and check on the outside world. i had loaded the new shellac album, excellent italian greyhound, into our computer, started listening to it and then went to espn.com to check on baseball. the weird part is that when i go to espn, the main headline says ‘touch and go’. that is the label shellac is on. what makes it weirder is that when i reloaded the page a minute later the headline was different.

maybe it’s not that weird.

well, this is the beginning post of a multi-parter [yeah right, i didn’t even finish this post, but we’ll see what happens. -n]. sea level’s closing down and i’ve been “working” here and hanging out way more often this year, and then fuckin’ todd has to go and ruin it. always thinking of himself, that bastard.

number one: ok, so people think i’m crazy or an idiot, but i did not know who fuckin micheal bay was.

number two: do not go see this movie. do not ever go to see this movie. do not ever rent this movie. do not ever watch this movie for free. do not ever let anyone pay you to watch this movie. remember godzilla 2000? yeah, that bad. did you see broken flowers? this was actually worse than broken flowers. WORSE. yes, worse.

number three: if you continue to read i must issue here a SPOILER WARNING. because i will tell you that this piece of shit has no real plot. as far as i can tell it was made by the people who brought us fox television and it’s a promotion for general motors full line of vehicles, nokia, ebay, avril levine and linkin park, or they’re equivalents.

how can i even begin to tell you what a complete piece of shit this movie is? it’s actually a story about some dorky guy who’s had a long-time crush on some hot girl. the girl is in with the jock/popular crowd, but turned off by them being so jock-ish. eventually this dorky kid turns out to be a hero and then he gets to bang this chick. oh yeah, there are robots that fight each other, but this dorky guy’s parents have more speaking parts than the entire cast of robots. and of course the hot chick knows everything about fixing and stealing cars. so it’s kind of like weird science mixed with some orange county garbage about meaningless, crazy car scenes mixed with the most terrible script. no, that doesn’t quite fit, but i’m gonna move on, finish saying what i have to say and go to bed.

so…the robots themselves have no sort of similarities (except optimus prime) to the transformer series or original movie. the story line is completely not there at all. i feel nauseas.

well, enough.

FUCK MICHEAL BAY. i would throw a party for a week if he fuckin died. maybe i’d shit on his grave. that’s right, it’s that bad. i had never seen any of his movies, but how appropriate for this to be the first.

I had low expectations, but you have to understand… i know that the transformers story and series wasn’t written anywhere near as well written as robotech or a lot of other good shit out there, but as a kid it was my favorite fucking thing ever.

when i was seven years old and i went to see transformers: the movie in 1984, i fucking cried when optimus prime died. i cried, i remembered that my brother (eight years older) told me not to be such a pussy, but i told him to fuck off. he also called the decepticons the decepticondoms, which i wasn’t sure about, but i knew he meant it in a bad way and that pissed me off too.

but anyways, i expected this movie to be bad, but… but, my friends didn’t seem to understand, maybe it’s because i haven’t been seeing many movies or tv shows, but this movie made me feel horrible about life, about my life, about the universe and all of existence.

micheal bay? fuck you. fuck you in your stupid fucking ass.

so i heard about this movie called “killing michael bay” and so i looked it up. it’s not that good either, but somehow i feel better knowing that there are so many other people out there that hate this guy that i didn’t know i hated until about three hours ago. so watch it if you like, it’s below.

this is fantastic… according to a study linked from reuters, 4 of the top ten least affordable cities for real estate are in california, including the top three…

#1 los angeles

#2 san francisco

#3 san diego

and #6 sacremento

so, weren’t some of us going to start a commune somewhere?

Fast growing LAX airport based company looking for an intelligent, hard working, innovated person to work directly with the CEO on projects directed toward expanding the company along with other administrative tasks.
Ideal person will be a recent graduate of a major collage receiving high GPA marks with a degree in business, finance or other high skilled professions.

Collage degree is required.

——————–

i’m not really sure where “innovated” people come from, but i guess medical science is making anything possible these days. also, the misspelling of “college” appears twice and makes me wonder who works in this office.

i just came across this guys site and it’s awesome… lou drendel… he grew up in the world war II era and his dad built models of all kinds of aircraft. his earliest memories are of trying to draw and color airplanes, so he’s spent his entire life drawing and painting really cool shit. unless of course you don’t like jets and spacecraft, but then you’d be an idiot and you would be reading something else, like maybe at stupidshitfordumbbastards.com or something like that. anyways, see one of his paintings below and check out his site (make sure to look at the galleries)  at http://www.aviation-art.net/

so, i looked into the history of friday the 13th and it seems as though no real significant event brought it on. some have speculated that the destruction of the “knights templar”, which was initiated on october 13th, 1307, was the trigger, but the absence of any reference to “friday the 13th” for 600 years of history and the fact that it is a somewhat obscure event has pretty much shot that one down.

it seems that the negative association a lot of societies have with the number 13 are not from a solid source either. some speculate that since judah was the last to sit down at the last supper (making him the 13th guest at the table) made it an unlucky number among christians. the greeks consider the number 13 lucky, but only on it’s own. and because the unimaginable happened when constantinople fell to the turks on a tuesday, the greeks have believed since then that tuesday is the unluckiest day of the week and for some reason a tuesday the thirteenth is considered very unlucky in greek culture. there is a ton of this shit to sift through… but what it boils down to is this…

it’s fuckin’ bullshit. just like christmas, medicare and democracy. so get over it. you want unlucky? you know where we’ll all be in a hundred years? yep. dead.

happy friday the 13th.

oh yeah… check out this wired magazine look back to the blackout in new york on july 13th, 1977, when i was a wee six month old baby… http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2007/07/gallery_dayintech_0713