The horror. The horror. (more…)

Risking the wrath of fans of superheroes, I’d like to start a dialogue about the films of James Ivory/Ismail Merchant, who had a production company that produced top quality film adaptations of literary works, using Henry James or E.M. Forster as the source material. Ivory and Merchant were also a couple, and Merchant recently died.

This week, I have watched 3 of the films from their catalog, The Europeans, Howard’s End, and Maurice. (more…)

Colin Ferrell can’t act. (more…)

I recently purchased The Muppet Show, Season One on DVD. This TV program holds a special place in my psyche, as I’m sure it does in the minds of many people. (The DVD cover proclaims The Muppet Show to be the most popular television show ever. I’m not sure how you verify something like that, but at the height of its popularity, The Muppet Show was seen by an estimated 250 million viewers in 102 countries.) I distinctly remember making sure not to take too long with my evening bath on whatever weeknight it came on—which also happened to be bath night—so that I would be allowed to stay up and watch the weekly 7:30 p.m. episode. I was six. For me, The Muppet Show is the definitive Muppet experience; I’m a bit too old to have seen Fraggle Rock, I don’t recall ever seeing a single episode of Muppets Tonight and I’m proud to say I missed Muppet Babies as well.

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This week’s Band Spotlight features CSS, a Brazillian dance band on the Sub Pop label. Read on to learn more about them, in their own words.
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I’ve spliced together clips of songs to see how many you can all identify. This batch of songs are all tunes that use falsetto vocals. (At least, I think they are—some of these vocalists might just have a high range? Don’t hate me if a couple aren’t actually falsetto.)

I’ll give you a day or two to make your guesses, then I’ll post the answers. There are clips from 15 songs this time around.

Song clips are in the radio.blog: “Name These Falsetto Tunes”

NOTE: You might want to listen and make your guesses before reading the comments, or other people’s guesses might spoil your fun.

UPDATE: I’ll paste the answers in down below. If you haven’t had a chance to make your guesses, don’t click on the “more” link until you have!
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I think I know which one will win, but I don’t know which will take 2nd.
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I haven’t read any reviews of M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water yet but my wife tells me it’s getting thrashed. After watching it I can see a couple of reasons why this might be the case. It might be that the critics are offended by Shyamalan’s handling of this movie’s movie critic character and they’re lashing out to get even. Or maybe it’s because the film is full of ridiculous plot contrivances, goofy characters, and throw-away meta silliness that make it really easy to write a negative review. Truth be told, I won’t begrudge anyone their negative opinions of this movie—Shyamalan really has served up a hanging slider that’s just begging to be clobbered—but overall, I liked it despite the glaring flaws. (more…)

Now is the time to foist on me your wretched cinematic refuse.

UPDATE: Voting’s over! Looks like I’ll be watching The Pirate Movie. Thanks for nothing, you jerks!

Isn’t it about time we stop saying, “double-u, double-u, double-u” before we say a web address? I mean really.

Seriously. My car caught on fire on the 405 freeway. (more…)

The next movie theme is….. pirates.

UPDATE: I’d be willing to expand this category to seafaring in general, just because I want to include Waterworld in the mix.

What movie should I be forced to watch? Remember, it has to be on netflix.

I hate you all. (more…)

As a child growing up in the 80’s I loved both football (Seahawks) and baseball (New York Mets, because my neighbor liked them, because they won the Series in ‘86). I consider that decade to be when football and baseball uniforms had it right, unlike today where they all look virtually the same. Sports are entertainment and part of that entertainment is the costume. Stir-ups should be part of the baseball costume (not anymore). Real color (something other than dark blue) and juxtaposition of color should be part of the costume (not anymore). New uniforms just don’t have the soul that the old ones did.

The following is a number of comparisons of current uniforms to their former counterparts: (more…)

This week’s Band Spotlight features Climber, a band I discovered via Bob Mould’s blog. Read on to learn more about them, in their own words—in this case, the words of Michael Nelson, vocalist/pianist.
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1) Barry Zuckercorn (Henry Winkler)jumping over a shark
2) “He’s going to be all right”
3) “There’s always money in the banana stand”
4) “COME ON!!!”
5) Mayon-egg

Runners up:
- Every single bleeped out swear word
- The Final Countdown
- “Solid as a Rock” (or Iraq)
- kaKA kaKA kaKA!!
- “yeah but where did the lighter fluid come from?”

This week let’s celebrate everyone’s favorite large Southeastern European peninsula.

Songs with Balkan themes (however strained the connection):

• The Mountain Goats, “International Small Arms Traffic”
• Balkan Beat Box, “Bulgarian Chicks”
• Taraf de Haidouks, “Dumbala Dumba” (more…)

Brian G is onto something, even if he is tragically wrong about Veronica Mars. All of the great shows on TV right now have a character that you secretly love, even though they’re totally evil, or at best morally reprehensible. Gaius Baltar, Logan and Aaron Echolls, Sawyer — we wouldn’t want to be them, but they’re sure fun to watch.

Of course, this is nothing new. Who’s the best of all time?

Battlestar Galactica is better than Lost.

Newsweek has a rock trivia quiz up on their site.

I thought it was tough—I only scored 56%. But I also didn’t try very hard. Some interesting facts in it.

What’s your score?

And what’s some interesting music trivia that you know? Try to stump us.

(Found via I AM FUEL.)

Here’s a list of some interesting moments from recent DVDs I’ve seen. (The descriptions are written from memory and may contain some inaccuracies as I did not have this blog post in mind at the time I watched them.)

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I’ve spliced together clips of songs to see how many you can all identify. This batch of songs are all classic rock tunes. I think most of these will be easy for everyone. There’s a couple more obscure songs but even those aren’t that difficult.

I’ll give you a day or two to make your guesses, then I’ll post the answers. There are clips from 14 songs this time around.

Song clips are in the radio.blog: “Name These Classic Rock Tunes”

NOTE: You might want to listen and make your guesses before reading the comments, or other people’s guesses might spoil your fun.

UPDATE: I’ll paste the answers in down below. If you haven’t had a chance to make your guesses, don’t click on the “more” link until you have!
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“In 1909, Sigmund Freud, accompanied by his then-disciple Carl Jung, made his one and only visit to the United States … Despite the great success of his visit, Freud always spoke, in later years, as if some trauma had befallen him in the United States.  He called Americans ’savages.’  He blamed America for physical ailments that afflicted him long before 1909.  Freud’s biographers have puzzled over this mystery, speculating about whether some unknown event might have happened in America that could make sense of his otherwise inexplicable reaction.” — Introductory note to The Interpretation of Murder.

In his soon-to-be released (and first) novel, Jed Rubenfeld uses this biographical anomaly as the foundation upon which he builds a immensely entertaining potboiler of a murder mystery.  (more…)

I was just recently reminded of an almost foolproof technique my buddy and I came up with to ask girls out. You see, the date itself was easy, it was the getting the date that was always painful. I mean, if you see an attractive young lady in your classroom or on campus somewhere that you’d like to go out with, how do you approach her (without being a freak)? Well, Joe and I had the answer: (more…)

This week’s Band Spotlight is firmly aimed at Ladyhawk, an indie rock band that I think a lot of you KB’ers will enjoy. Read on to learn more about them, in their own words—in this case, the words of their bassist/vocalist, Sean Hawryluk.
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