I'm lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

The White Stripes' new album "Icky Thump" is coming out on June 19th. The first single, also called "Icky Thump" is apparently on iTunes now. I haven't heard it. I'll check it out when I get home if I remember (I'm bad at remembering. I blame drugs.) They're touring Europe & Canada first, but there are some US dates:

Sun 07/22/07 Portland, ME Cumberland Co. Civic Center
Mon 07/23/07 Boston, MA Agganis Arena
Tue 07/24/07 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
Wed 07/25/07 Wallingford, CT Chevrolet Theatre
Fri 07/27/07 Wilmington, DE Grand Opera House
Sat 07/28/07 Fairfax, VA Patriot Center
Sun 07/29/07 North Myrtle Beach, SC House Of Blues
Mon 07/30/07 Birmingham, AL Sloss Furnace
Tue 07/31/07 Southaven, MS Snowden Grove Park

I'll be at the Garden show, no ticket info as of yet, so I'm not sure how much they'll be charging. Maybe they'll do what Tenacious D did and charge ballroom prices for every ticket. Surprisingly, they managed to fill, if not sell out, the whole arena. Who knew? Anyway, I'm guessing The White Stripes won't be doing that, since they probably have a little more pull than The D. But I doubt they'll get to The Who/Elton John/Billy Joel/Rolling Stones proportions. So I'll still shell out the cash if it's around $65-$70. Plus, the show we went to at Keyspan Park on Coney Island in '05 was really fucking awesome, so I'd love to see them again. And more importantly, MSG has that one bar that has $6 pints of Yuengling that come in a plastic mug with a pretzel stick in the handle! I have so many of those mugs at home, I must've taken at least 10 with me after the NIN show we went to in December of '05.

One thing that struck me when I heard they were playing the Garden though was that I saw this band in April of '02 for like $15-$20 at Bowery Ballroom, and now they're playing The Garden. I guess that shit really does happen.

That marshmallow just got fucked!

As you may have heard, Allen Klein has finally loosened his death grip on the rights to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surrealist masterpieces ‘El Topo’ and ‘The Holy Mountain’, allowing Anchor Bay, in association with Abkco Films, to release them both on dvd for the first time. The films are set for a May 1st release date, both as two individual dvds and as part of the six disc “The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky” box set coming out on the same day.

“The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky” contains four dvds and two cds. Included are both “El Topo” and “The Holy Mountain”, as well as Jodorowsky’s riot-inciting 1968 debut feature “Fando y Lis”, and the previously unavailable 1957 short film “La Crevate”. The two cds included in the set are the soundtracks to “El Topo” and “The Holy Mountain”, respectively. All films have been extensively remastered and restored. The set will also include many extras such as trailers, audio commentary by Jodorowsky, deleted scenes, photo galleries, script excepts, and the 1994 feature-length documentary “La Constellation Jodorowsky”, among other things.

The Abkco Films site is currently dedicated to these new releases, including a nice video montage with footage from the films and excerpts from a new Jodorowsky interview. You can see it here.

This is awesome news as many people (including myself) have been waiting a very long time to see these films officially released in any form (I haven't been "waiting" per se, but I have been following the story since I heard it was a possibilty). It’s really great to see that they were taken care of so well, it looks like Abkco and Anchor Bay have really put together an excellent release.

Diggers

I can't believe this movie is finally coming out, and in two short weeks no less. I thought this would never see the light of day. I saw Paul Rudd talking about this movie three and a half years ago on Conan O'Brien's show. He talked about filming on Long Island and told a story that I've remembered and retold ever since.

The movie's about clam diggers, so they're out on Long Island filming these clam digging scenes in the ocean. A boat comes by at some point during the day and the people see that they're shooting a movie. So they slow down and yell over to the 'Diggers' crew, "Hey, what are you shooting?" So the crew yells back, "Diggers!" But it was so noisy on the ocean that the people in the boat heard something slightly different, so they got a very surprised look on their faces and drove off.

Paul Rudd also told a story that was a follow-up to a bit he had done the last time he was on the show where he went to Washington Square Park and offered passers-by free piggy back rides. In the bit, he had a "No Fatties" policy. So one day, after that aired, he was walking by Washington Square Park and a girl stopped him on the street and asked for a ride. Paul Rudd, knowing she had seen the bit, decided to go with it, so he says "No Fatties." But apparently the girl was a little on the chubby side. So she gets a shocked and sad look on her face and Paul Rudd feels like a dick.

Funny stuff.

Anyway, here's the trailer. The movie looks like it could be pretty good. It was written by Ken Marino (Louie "I wanna dip my balls in it" from The State). It's not what I was expecting from what I had read, I thought it would be more in line with 'Wet Hot American Summer'. But it looks like it's gonna be a good movie nonetheless.

It hits theatres and HDNET Movies (whatever that is) on Friday April 27th, then the dvd comes out four days later on Tuesday May 1st. Talk about instant gratification.