Name this Movie

http://www.spreeblick.com/2005/06/29/videoratsel/

The answer's in the comments, so watch the video first.

We need more pink bubblewrap

The death ray is almost complete. Just a few final adjustments, and some materials issues... Thanks to my DeathrayCam^TM I was able to identify and fire the guy who kept eating the bubblewrap, but not before he went through five rolls of the stuff. Keep an eye on the guy with the check shirt for me, would you? I think he's a spy.

Ah, work - you could watch it all day.

Obligatorycounterramble

Wow, three full years of integrated non-destruction. It was integrated, right? Good to see you got at least a new appreciation for Radiohead out of it. Although Doon and I seemed to get the same result in less time at our particular daycare institution. But we didn't get iPods, so it all balances out.

What's this "no more batbroadband" talk now, Ted? That kind of stuff leads to madness! Next thing you know, you'll be getting work done.

The Radiohead cover stuff sounds intriguing, so I headed for amazon and used some blunt instruments to pry a few sample clips out of the site and play them using the bizarre OS that some lunatic commie installed on this PC.

After three notes of No Surprises, I had a most disturbing flashback of a hotel elevator outside Boston. It even brought back the shiny brass sign with the words "Shoes and shirts required in lobby". Luckily the clip was over before anyone could tell me what kind of day to have, sir.

Probably not the best choice of track, given that the point of that one is that it's an elevator music melody. Talk Show Host, for example, seems to work much better, afaict through the mushiness of the clips. Lemme screw around with my interwebnet for a bit and drop a mail.

RIAA Radar even suggests it would be defensible to buy one of the two CDs. Why yes, now that you ask, I do happen to have a greasemonkey script for integrating that with amazon.

String quartet Weezer I can do whithout, though. Or any kind of Weezerage, for that matter. I can't think of any Coldplay track that wouldn't happily flog dairy products. Just add some smiling kids, a sunrise, and leave to stand at room temperature until sickly. These are things we must agree to disagree on. (Did I see the word "intelligent" associated with Blink-"Santa Claus will rape your dogs"-182 back there? And don't give me any of your irony crap, either..)

The Discovery of Slowness is one of the very few books I'd gratuitously read again and again. Perhaps not in English, though - I do remember that translation being so bad it made me want to do one of my own. Hey, wouldn't it be neat if I could do that without being sued into the ground? Who knows, maybe I'll live long enough to see the copyright expire. Unfortunately for the DoS-induced Nadolny fan, there doesn't seem to be any more where that came from.

The God of Impertinence is good in theory: Take Hermes, send him out into the world after being locked up for 2000 years, let him run around commenting on stuff and causing trouble in sundry amusing ways, then run into a couple of other gods, one of whom happens to be the guy that locked him up 2000 years ago, and throw in a love interest who may or may not be a goddess herself, and may or may not know this, and may or may not be in a coma and dreaming the whole story. In practice, it doesn't work. At all. Occasional nuggets of coolness buried in piles and piles of randomness and shredded splinters of plot. I'm willing to admit the possibility that the book makes some kind of sense if you know a _lot_ about greek mythology and whatnot, but to me it looks like he just gave up halfway through and published his notes.

There's a thing called Netzkarte in German, which is ok, but that doesn't seem to have been translated. It's a slightly autobiographical quarter-life-crisis thing, about a dude who aimlessly rides trains around Germany while he figures out his life. Entertaining, but nowhere near DoS. I think Netzkarte was his first, followed by DoS. After that it was the Hermes mess, and Er oder Ich, which rehashes the theme of Netzkarte with an older guy, and falls down in a heap in pretty much the same way as the Hermes thing.

So as not to be completely negative, and speaking of string quartets, let me add An Equal Music (spoiler warning on the Publisher's Weekly review) to your pile of recommendations. Tortured violinist in tragically doomed love affair, with interesting stuff about music and musicians thrown in. It's a big improvement on A Suitable Boy - the fact that it's about one third the length pretty much sums up the difference.

Nice hat.

Pretension and melody

I haven't rambled about music in a while, so here's what's currently cool. If anything grabs your attention, send me a mail and I'll arrange its transfer. Be quick though, I won't have broadband for too much longer.

I finally got my hands on Slint's Spiderland, having heard it described as an overlooked masterpiece by dozens of critics and hundreds of musicians. It's not bad. All rumbling and threatening and discordant with the occasional fractured build-up. Mogwai were definitely ripping them off for Young Team. But, while I'm sure it was startlingly original and cooler than Jesus in the early ninties...it's been done better since by (among others) Mogwai and GYBE! So the verdict is a slightly interested "meh".

I've been listening to a lot of latter-day Radiohead lately and I think I'm finally starting to get it. I always appreciated it and possibly admired it, but I never would have sought it out to listen to. I threw Hail To The Thief on the iPod before going to France and it started making more sense by the time I came back. The poppier stuff (a relative term, I guess) like "2+2=5" and "There There" had always appealed...but I finally saw the point of "Sit Down, Stand Up", "Sail To The Moon", "Where I End..." and "Wolf At The Door".

This may have been influenced by two albums by a guy called Christopher O Riley I've been listening to, "Hold Me To This" and "True Love Waits". He's a classical pianist who does solo reinterpretations of Radiohead stuff. And not just the easy stuff either. He covers "Like Spinning Plates" (originally weird electronic noises), Talk Show Host (a four note melody over four minutes) and 2+2=5 (something like a 17:5 time signature). Worth seeking out, and they definitely have more than novelty value.

In the same vein, I tracked down a few "String Quartet Tribute To..." albums. This is basically a work for hire string quartet that does not for note covers of popular albums. They've done Radiohead, Coldplay, Evanesence, Foo Fighters, Weezer etc. etc. It's not too bad, and it's easy to listen to. However, Oonagh described their version of "In My Place" as "butter ad music"...which is about the most perfect description of it.

Speaking of the Foo Fighters, their new (double) album was supposed to be a massive return to the form they had on the Colour and the Shape. Hardly. It's not as dreadful as One By One (three singles and a whole load of badly produced filler), but it's not a whole lot better. If Dave Grohl really thinks this is some of the best work he's ever done, then he's sadly mistaken. It's a pity, cos they're a fairly inoffensive band, and they seem like nice people. What's more, they're occasionally capable of making interesting music. Unfortunately, this isn't it.

And speaking of Weezer, Christ is their new album bad. I don't just mean bad, I mean gut churningly awful. I thought it might be a joke when I heard it first, but apparently they're serious. Believe it or not, Beverly Hills is probably the best song on the album. There's a song on it called "We Are All On Drugs", and it's tempting to read a little too much into it. Like everything else on the album, it's musically boring, overproduced, and the lyrics are just indescribably terrible. I really can't overemphasise how embarrassingly bad the lyrics on this album are. Really, really, really, really bad. I mean, it sounds like the lyricist is a lobotomised four year old. I swear, for once I'm not exaggerating. Absolutely pitiful. Immediately distrust any outlet that gives this album a good review.

Y'know, I'm still not entirely convinced the whole album is not just some elaborate postmodern joke.

I don't know if I've mentioned the Great Southern Rock Opera by the Drive-By Truckers before. Inspired stuff. A 3-guitar 70's blues rock concept album about the rise and fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the mysterious duality of the "Southern Thang". Eats the White Stripes and Kings of Leon for breakfast. Check out the song "Three Great Alabama Icons" if you need convincing. (I'm getting the strange feeling I've already mentioned this to you before...if so, I apologise...all my recent memories are of aircraft maintenance).

The new Eels album. Double album. Same 'ol, same 'ol. Meh. If I wanted to listen to Tom Waits I would. There are few things I'm certain of, but one is that the world needs only one Tom Waits.

Speaking of Kings, I started listening to the Kings of Convenience album (parallel lines) lately, and I actually didn't fall asleep straightaway. It's nice, inoffensive gentle acoustic folk. But it's got some funky melodies and interesting harmonies on it. Worth digging up.

Auf Der Maur. Melissa Auf Der Maur spent years as a bassist in bands like Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, and finally got around to releasing a solo album. It's pretty good, if you like melodic heavy metal. It sounds exactly like Belly crossed with the heavy side of the Pumpkins. It's not bad at all.

Blink 182 split up! No!!!!!! Just when it was beginning to be less uncool to like them. Bastards. I've been trying to fill the void they leave with other intelligent melodic punk bands like Alexisonfire (crap), the Used (crap), Finch (screamy crap), My Chemical Romance (whiney, screamy, crap) and Motion City Soundtrack (cr...no, wait a minute, they're slightly ok. they have a long way to go, but they have the right idea.)

Bell X1 have a new album coming out soon, which I'm cautiously looking forward to (thye haven't exactly been knocking it out of the park in live shows lately). Damien Rice must surely have recorded a follow-up to O by now. The Frames promised a new album this year, and I don't believe them for a second. The Arcade Fire are still the coolest thing since sliced bread. Biffy Clyro should have a new album out soon too.

So that's music in the last few months covered.

The Discovery of the Discovery of Slowness

Finally got around to reading it during the last INDeT trip. It's funkyness alright. I can see why you liked it. Very cool concept. I can't help wondering if anything got lost in translation (like references to Franklin's "Fixed Look"...I imagine it has a cooler analogue in German). Am now a Nadolny fan.

I haven't finished it yet, and it's on a pile of books that have been accumulating for ages while INDeT got finished off. Said pile includes:

100 Years of Solitude
Logic, Design and Mathematics
Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour (Liam Clancy's book)
The Unequalled Self (bigoraphy of Samuel Pepys)
The last few chapters of Stephenson's baroque thingy
The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood, I think I have Oryx and Crake somewhere too)
Gravity's Rainbow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A few Iain Banks books

...and many, many others. Oonagh has a whole bunch of stuff she's been pushing towards me.

In requiem...

I wasn't a pretty sight by the end...

World's most useful webcam (in lousy haikus)

This is a web cam
Google sees many like it
But this one is cool.

A number to call
A phone that noone will answer
But the train will run.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

Colonel Sweeto:

Mittens:

Curly:


...and lots more at the archive.

Wow. First post in ages. Quiet round here.