Shenanigans!

Taken from an email I sent to Baker this morning.

"Don’t you know how much I hate it when people sell tickets for a ridiculous amount above face? Not that I care if you do it, I don’t wanna go to your crappy show. Haha. But living in NY, that shit happens with every fucking show. There were 2 Amy Winehouse shows last week, tickets were $20 face. In NYS, there’s a law that says you can’t resell a ticket to an event in NYS for more than face+20% or $5, whichever is higher. Every single person with an extra ticket to those shows was trying to sell it on craigslist for $200-$300. What the fuck is that? And I hear the shows only lasted about 45 minutes and it took an hour and a half after the opening act for Amy Winehouse to start her set. I call shenanigans.

I wish there was more enforcement on that shit here because it happens with every fucking show in town! It’s really annoying and has made me seriously cut down on the number of shows I’m going to this year. Last year, we went to like 15 shows (only about 4 or 5 of which were a couple local bands we like who have shows in small clubs). This year, so far we’ve got:

Secret Machines on May 17 (tonight) @ The Annex $25/ticket (I just bought tix for this yesterday cause the place is a tiny bar downtown and it’s kinda weird they’re playing there. Their big show is on Saturday at some new ballroom)
Kings of Leon on June 5 @ Roseland Ballroom $25/ticket
Deftones on June 8 @ Roseland Ballroom $25/ticket
Earl Greyhound on June 15 @ Bowery Ballroom $13/ticket
The White Stripes on July 24 @ Madison Square Garden $50/ticket

Last year, I spent $100/ticket to see the Chili Peppers and $125/ticket to see the Foo Fighters acoustic show. No more! Someone who I really really need to see is gonna have to come around for me to shell out anything like that anymore. Otherwise, I’m gonna pay face or I’m just not gonna go. Fuck it. It’s just not worth it anymore. Everyone’s just out to make a buck here. Buying tickets from people used to be more civilized, there was a certain scale of supply and demand, and some level of respect for the fans. But now everyone’s trying to charge over 10x face value, just because everyone else is? Fuck that. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to be standing next to someone at a show who would have sold their $20 ticket for $250 if they couldn’t make it."

Keep Paris Hilton in Jail

Where she will hopefully be raped and shanked.

Since some douche decided this vacuous waste deserves some kind of special treatment for being the retard offspring of some guy with money and started a petition to The Governator to keep her out of jail, someone else started a petition to urge said Governator to tell all these dumb assholes to fuck off and put that stupid bitch in jail, so she can be forced to commit acts of pleasure with people who can only be considered women by medical standards.

Sign the petition:
No Clemency for Paris Hilton

Cause it's funny and maybe she actually will get shanked. And if not, maybe we'll get some photos that will make up for never getting any photos of Michael Jackson in jail after his makeup wore off and his perm grew out.

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.

like a shotgun filled with handjobs

1. Kings of Leon
'Because of the Times'
I got a hold of this a few days ago, played it a few times over the weekend and on my way to work today. It's good so far. Their first album ('Youth & Young Manhood') didn't do too much for me, but their last one ('Aha Shake Heartbreak'), aside from having a great title, was pretty good. It's basically a diary about being on your first big tour, doing way too much blow, and ending up with the wrong girls in every city. It's really jittery and nervous. Catches the mood of its subject matter perfectly. And "King of the Rodeo" is just an excellent song (complete with handclaps).

But the new one sounds like they traded the cocaine addiction for a strong affinity to Jack Daniels and pulled out their old Zeppelin albums. It's a lot heavier and a lot better. They're definitely growing as musicians. They're making the progression The Strokes should have made, developing the "nu garage" sound and taking it further. Rather than getting nervous about it and putting out an album full of new ideas that unfortunately have nothing to do with each other, leaving a disjointed, fan-alienating mess. (Not to say 'First Impressions of Earth' is bad, it's just not a Strokes record... or a very solid record.)

2. Flaming Lips 'Zaireeka'
5.1 Ultimate DVD Experience
If you know what 'Zaireeka' is, you know that it's damn near impossible to properly enjoy the album without a lot of hassle and free time. Well, imagine a world where you can put a single disc into your dvd player, hit play, and enjoy all the wonders of 'Zaireeka', all 4 discs not only perfectly synced to one another, but also dynamically mixed in the vein of the official Flaming Lips 5.1 releases ('The Soft Bulletin', 'Yoshimi', 'At War with the Mystics', 'V.O.I.D.'). Now, once you've wrapped your head around that, imagine that all of the songs are synced up to clips of some of the most bizarre images from a variety of films from the past 25 years. Now, imagine all of this, plus a big spliff. Are you interested? Enter the 'Zaireeka 5.1 Ultimate DVD Experience'.

I can tell you from experience that this shit will blow your fucking mind. I reccommend track 5, "The Train Runs Over The Camel But Is Derailed By The Gnat". Totally awesome

3. Grindhouse
Fuck yeah. This shit is gonna be so awesome. I'm gonna be there at the midnight showing on opening night with a bottle of wine and a straw. And maybe an empty quarter gallon milk jug or something, it's over fucking 3 hours long, man.

4. Winter is finally over.
I can't wait to look at the indoor/outdoor thermometer in my living room and not see any numbers below 57. I'm tired of winter. It fucked us this year, it made us believe it wasn't gonna come. It was unseasonably warm in november and december, then the new year rolls around and what happens? Fucking ice storms! What the fuck? Fuck winter, we're not friends anymore.

5. Marijuana.
Let's just take a moment to appreciate it. Good times.

in the beginning... sort of

So here it is. I guess I'll have another go at this since the last one was too full of cocaine and aggravation to ever have a chance at being coherent, though it does paint a pretty clear (if disjointed) picture of my college years. But anyway, I guess we'll go ahead and try this again...