The Prodigal Daughter

This a baby born in China that may have its third arm surgically removed. What’s interesting is that both arms seem fully formed, making it difficult to determine which one to amputate.

But only if we invest in Lester Clancy’s new cordless jump-rope. Ohio native (why am I not surprised) Clancy has finally patented his cordless jump-rope idea, something that he’s been toying around with since 1988. A man who works within the prison system as a laundry coordinator says it’s perfect for prisoners who are suicidal but still need a cardiovascular workout and of course the clumsy, lastly don’t forget about those hazardous low-ceiling fans, a hazard no more. Though I seriously doubt that anyone suicidal will want a good workout.

What makes his invention work is that the handles are weighted so that it simulates a rope being there. The feel of a rope without the look of it. Impressive. The only problem is that Clancy doesn’t have enough financial backing to make another handle, so at the moment it’s only one. Doesn’t everyone want to pretend that they can jump double dutch? I know I do. Send that man a check! For more interesting news on inventions check out Patently Silly.

Tags:
Inventions

Japanese Tanka is a form of poetry much like the Haiku but older and with 31 syllables in a 5,7,5,7,7, pattern instead of the 17 syllable 5,7,5 pattern of the Haiku. I have been writing some as exercises. Please enjoy:

The only access
     That I have to you is through
          Electronic words.
               They feel so anonymous
                     When sent to you in this way.
	
Eyes seen through glasses,
     Peering at them is a trick,
          Hard to know and read.
               Even when removed it's not
                    An intimate gaze toward me.
	
Unattainable
     Intimacy is what I
          Seek through your touch on
               My feeble shoulders and arms
                    Covered in bruises and scars.
	
It is hot outside;
     Waves rise up from the edges
           Of roads and plant life.
                A mean sun on my shoulders
                     Forming pearls of sweat and dirt.
     

Taking a little time off from blogging for some serious writing and job hunting.

I am still working diligently on that novel. Here’s another excerpt:

…Richie has been to the emergency room more times then I can count on two hands and he’s only nine.

When he was five a dog bit his face and he received six stitches next to his left eye. There was a neighborhood dog, some kind of rottweiler mix, that was always kept in a yard and I am assuming because of this acquired a nasty disposition. Something that I admire about my little brother is that he has absolutely no fear. After the incident he would tell me that he just wanted to let the dog out so that it could play with him and the other kids. The story he told me was this:

Well I saw the dog and I had walked by there every day to get to the bus stop. He (the dog) always growled and barked at me but I knew that all he wanted was to play like me and my friends. Then Trevor Avery told me that if I let him out we could play games with him. Trevor knows a lot because he’s like two grades ahead of me. So I went over to the fence and I saw the dog. He had his teeth out all mean and I thought that maybe I shouldn’t let him out, you know, cuz his teeth were out. But there was Trevor being all like Richie he just wants a bone to chew. That made sense I thought. So I let this dog out and it’s really big. He jumped up at me and knocked me down and I wasn’t really sure how to get back up. His teeth were like this close to me (He held up his thumb and his index finger to indicate the distance that the dog’s ferocious jaws had been snapping at him). Before I knew it Trevor was pulling me away and we were running and I was bleeding. A LOT. Mom was really pissed. She started crying all the way to the emergency room. I hope she’s not still mad at me. It wasn’t really my fault and it isn’t fair if she thinks it is.

Another incident was maybe a few months later in June or July. We were at the community pool. The one where you have to have plastic badges with numbers raised off of them attached to pins that would always stick you if you put them on your suit. It was there that Richie decided he wanted to be the first shallow water diver to be successful at the age of five. I was with him but at the time I was enamoured with the life guard who worked there, a certain Jesse Beach. He had this great brown skin that brought out his eyes. So we were busy talking when out of the corner of my eye I see Richie run and dive full force into the swimming pool and it took a few moments to process that he was doing this from the wrong end. Jesse and I quickly exchanged horrified looks with eachother before we went running to the side of the water. Richie had stood up and was holding his nose making little plumes of blood in the water with each drop. It was swirling around him in beautiful stringy clouds. He just stood there and looked and me and smiled crookedly. With a mouth full of blood he said “I guess that wasn’t such a good idea, huh?” I shook my head and told him to get out of the water. During the car ride to the ER Richie explained himself with his hand on his broken nose. There are still stains on the passenger seat from that incident.

You know Vern. I was thinking that I could just like dive in and I’d be light enough with the right, uhm projectory then I could definitely just dive in there it turns out that I guess I am a bit too heavy and I just didn’t skim the surface enough or something. In my head it looked like something real easy to pull off you know, like a handstand underwater or those stupid teas parties that the girls do. They always look so stupid when they do that. I know I’m good at diving usually so it just seemed like something that I would have no problem.

Richie maybe you should stop talking and try not to get blood on the seat. (He laughed at that one)

It’s pretty much too late for that Vern. It’s kind of already all over the place. So I guess I shouldn’t try that one again, even though I think it’s still possible. I just need to lift myself up or something somehow. I promise not to break anything if I try it again. (He looked at me hopefully)

Yeah well. You won’t be trying that again Richie. I can’t keep bringing you to the ER when mom is at work and when I’m supposed to be watching you.

You were too busy with that lifeguard huh? (I shoot him a look. It’s the one where my face says that I have no retort but I still want to say something. Not much could really excuse me from not watching him, but fuck he should know better)

I think you should save some of your blood for the ER Richie, in which case you might want to stop talking.

But…(To which I silenced him by making a sound that is much like air escaping from a tire; a harsh SHHHHHHH!)

On sunday night I went to the Launchpad to go see the Romeo Goes to Hell play with Teenage Bottlerocket The The Phenomenauts and The Epoxies. It started relativley early (around 7pm) so the crowd for Romeo wasn’t that great and I was drinking the whole time that Teenage Bottlerocket were playing. What I did manage to see were two pretty incredible bands give excellent performances.

The Phenomenauts came on looking somewhat like DEVO. I say this because one of the band members wears a helmet with glasses attached. They all have matching space outfits down to white and black creepers. What they sound like is Rockabilly from the future. They have taken the normal sound that you would associate with that kind of music and multiplied it by ten. Don’t worry there’s still an upright bass. At one point they had the crowd screaming that earth is the best. They got the crowd pumped and sounded really tight.

Then The Epoxies came on. They were also wearing pretty tight outfits. I would describe them as Synth Punk. I’m not sure if that’s a real category but it’s the best way to describe them. Their guitars had lasers attached to them and much to the chigrin of people in the blacony were flashing them up there and at the disco ball. Their energy is fantastic. Roxie Epoxie dances around while the rest of the band does their thing. Both sets were complete with confetti and toilet paper.

Do yourself a favor and go see these bands when they come to your town. They are both on tour together, and if any of my Jersey friends are reading then you can check them out in Philadelphia@The Barbary on June 4th and in Asbury@Asbury Lanes on June 7th. For the rest of the country the tour dates are located here:
Tour Dates

Tags:
Epoxies
The Phenomenauts

Apparently Madonna has yet again shocked the church with an on stage crucifixion during her new tour. At her show in LA she “crucified” herself onto a mirrored (yes mirrored) cross. As you can see the cross itself is really tacky and she’s standing on a little platform with her arms spread out. I would think that by now the Church would pretty much ignore anything that this woman does because this is nothing new. In the 80’s her Like a Prayer video not only shocked the Church but also resulted in Pepsi pulling out from a major advertising campaign with her. So after all these years Madonna putting herself onto a giant mirrored cross is just kind of lame, not shocking. What’s actually shocking is that her concert tickets cost up to $400 dollars. I guess that tacky stage cross cost a lot of money…

Tags:
Madonna

The Fiery Furnaces (Eleanor and Matt Friedberger) new release, Bitter Tea is a strange an experimental album. I have been listening it trying to decide if I like it or not. What they seem to be doing on it is to be strange and spastic for no reason. I think the best way to go about it is to listen to each track, even though during each song you are taken all over the place. It’s like a story told by someone who is on some heavy drugs.

The first track is In my Little Thatched Hut. At least it gives you and idea of what you are to expect form the rest of the album. Waiting to Know has a strange and abrupt break towards the end as do most of the songs. Listening to two songs at once is what it sounds like. The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry reminds you of the Beatles Number 9, complete backwards sounds and lyrics. It’s fucking torturous.

The end of the album is better then the rest. It was pretty hard to get through to that point though. It starts around Oh Sweet Woods which isn’t bad because they maintain a beat. Borneo is OK, even when she sounds awkward during some parts. Never is actually a really good track and Benton Harbor Blues is probably what their title track should have been because it’s the longest most complex and interesting on the whole album. Their transitions from song to song are about the only thing that bring the songs together but the first half of the album is so weak that even those transistions and one great song can’t even bring it back from its own destructive force.

It’s a battle between synthetic sound and natural sound and in no way does that result in something that’s even all interesting. It’s not like The Flaming Lips where both sounds put together make something beautiful and strange. Instead their repetitive lyrics combined with annoying musical sounds become something incredibly boring to listen to until Benton Harbor blues. Being experimental can be risky but also can be pulled off, yet here it just sounds like they are fucking around with their instruments for no reason and it results in making you feel as if you are listening to someone having a seizure. If that’s the sound that they were going for it was successful and if you like something that’s on that side of the spectrum you may want to have a listen. Even then I would start it at track 8. Otherwise it leaves a taste in my mouth like I would expect a bitter tea to do.

Tags:
The Fiery Furnaces
Bitter Tea
Music Review

I was a visitor of Fine Line, Route 66 tattoo parlour to see my friend Max Vasher do work on Alanna. There’s a Photo Set up at flickr. I got some great pictures of Max and the process of getting a tattoo. Check them out here:
Zia Symbol, The Beginning

I was kind of laying prostate in my bed this morning feeling weird because of the full moon last night. It’s strange; I swear because we are closer to the sky out here that we feel the lunar effects even more then most. So I was laying there kind of bummed out and I was trying to think of what would make me feel better.

What I came up with was to go see Poseidon, the remake of the 1972 classic, The Poseidon Adventure. One of the main reasons for me to even entertain a remake of such a camp classic is that it stars one of my favorites, Kurt Russell. I mean you really can’t even begin to compare the cast from the original to this one. Dreyfuss and Russell are certainly not Hackman or Borgnine and of course there is absolutely no way of replacing Shelly Winters. So let’s try to forget about the original because it’s the only way you can really even begin to evaluate any kind of remake; by pretending there is nothing else to base an opinion on and taking this film as a piece by itself. Does it stand up alone?

Kind of. It’s directed by the German born Wolfgang Petersen (THE PERFECT STORM, OUTBREAK), a man that’s no stranger to action films, or films about boats in the ocean being attacked by waves. What he does successfully is bring about the disorientation that would occur if a cruise ship were to flip over. The problem is that he does this even in the beginning of the film with the opening sequence where we see Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) running around the ship (presumably because we’re establishing that his character is in great shape) and the camera is just going all over the place on the ship with him, which for an opening sequence is very disorienting. There are some really great action sequences though, and anyone who is a fan of bad action (as I am) will appreciate a lot of the sequences. There is also a really great build up of suspense. The scene within one of the air conditioner shafts is especially harrowing to watch as an audience member.

Another thing that this film accomplishes is establishing connections with the characters to the audience. The mortality rate is pretty high in this one, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t genuinely attached to some of the characters and what their problems or foibles may be. There are some you’d rather see go then others, but at least the film makes this connection. There wouldn’t be much of a film otherwise.

What I didn’t enjoy was some of the dialogue/acting in the film. There are just some god awful moments when some of the actors are given the most ridiculous lines to say and you can tell that it’s hard even for them to deliver them. The rest of the cast, before it gets pared down, is also pretty horrible. Once you get to the main players the acting is pretty excellent. Rusell never disappoints me and Lucas is OK. Dreyfuss is a little rusty it seems, but pulls out a pretty good role on the end.

Poseidon is a great action movie, it is something to go see on a hot summer day during a matinee. Don’t pay full price and don’t go in expecting to be blown away by great writing/acting. The action is enough to hold your attention and so is the anticipation of who may be the next to go. I wouldn’t call it a must see, but it certainly did its part in entertaining me and taking me away from my otherwise strange weekend.

Tags:
Poseidon
Movie Review