BAD ASS

You guys remember the video of the old guy with the beard that beat the shit out of the other guy on the bus in Oakland? The one that was filmed and spread around the Internet like wildfire?

You know, Epic Beard Man?



Apparently that needed the big screen treatment, with Danny Trejo as Epic Beard Man. No really. Here's the trailer.



I can't help but think this is a joke. I kind of hope that it is, too.

Hollywood makes enough stupid movies every year as it is, and now they're trolling YouTube for ideas? That means that the quality of films we actually get on a regular basis can only go down from here. I want the opposite. I want talented filmmakers to make original movies. I don't want directors of car commercials being asked to implement studio money-grab films, which is exactly what this looks like.

It's a shame.

Even worse, I kind of really want to see it.

YIPPIE KI YAY!

DIE HARD was based on a book by Roderick Thorp entitled “Nothing Lasts Forever” - a sequel to another book entitled “The Detective”, which in 1968 was made into a film starring Frank Sinatra.

Because of a clause in Sinatra’s contract for “The Detective” which gave him the right to reprise his role in a sequel, he was actually the first person offered the role of John McClane, even though he was 73 years old at the time.

Also, coincidentally, Bruce Willis made his movie debut in The First Deadly Sin walking out of a bar as Sinatra walks into it.

(source: Film Trivia)

APOLLO

Of course I made Brandon take my picture next to an Apollo spacesuit at the Planetarium.

BEHIND THE MYTHS

I don't care what anyone says. The Mythbusters are awesome. They're doing a live touring show early next year called 'Behind the Myths' that's coming to Kingsbury Hall in SLC.

Pretty sure it's just going to be them doing a FAQ type talk like the last time they did one of these tours—which means no crazy experiments or explosions. Still sounds really interesting and I'm all in.

ARSON

This is my man Makena. It's his song, and the video that he directed for it. He's got skills.

He's also a hell of a writer. I worked with him at the Chronicle and on Red Pulse. Big things ahead.

GODLAND

Picked up this little guy today at Dr. Volt's comics. I've been moving away from buying single issues and more towards awesome hardcovers and trades. There are single issues I still want to read, but I hate storing them all—luckily, most of them are in my parents basement. I've been trying to make the switch to digital on my iPad, but it's been difficult (more on that tomorrow, I hope).

Either way, I'm excited to get going on this. It's on the list right after Patton Oswalt's Zombie, Spaceship, Wasteland and Greg Graffin's Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God.

GODLAND

"See how the greatest cosmic superhero epic of the new century began! See Commander Adam Archer, Maxim, Basil Cronus, Nickelhead, IBOGA and more in all their oversized glory! What other book delivers the secret origin of the universe? What other book squeezes your guts like an angry Torture-Bot? Only Godland gives you everything you'll ever need!"

JAMES ELLROY HATES EVERYTHING

James Ellroy is hilarious—mostly because he doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks. He's been that way for years.

Every interview he gives he plays up a different angle. Sometimes he crass and awkward like he always was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, other times he plays up the role of a callous, grumpy, bitter old man—like the video below. But he's not. He has a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor and he likes playing up that image as much as possible.

Also, make sure you watch that Conan video just to see Ellroy interact with Dave Chappelle because it's fantastic.

I found this video on Warren Ellis' site earlier today and loved it. Figured I'd share it, and Ellis' thoughts on it, with you. He's in on the joke, too.

Watch the videos and then immediately go out and get some of his novels, American Tabloid, L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia are some of his best.

WarrenEllis.com -- "A glorious routine by novelist James Ellroy. And I think he was reining himself in, too.

Interesting interstitial things happen when a writer devises a character to be, for interviews and the like. Especially if someone’s been doing it a long time, and has gone through the cycle and, I suspect in Ellroy’s case, gotten back to the point where he hopes someone somewhere is getting the joke. Listen to how Ellroy speaks, now: more than ever, he’s speaking for tv, and speaking to be transcribed. A lot of media training under the bridge, there. And the little wink to the audience, if not his interviewer, is there too. Slowed down, like a big bit of bait being trawled across still water."

HUGO

I don't like 3D movies. They hurt my eyes, the bridge of my nose and the top of my ears get sore and I just get generally annoyed with the entire spectacle.

I didn't like AVATAR very much for that reason alone. It looked great, but every twenty minutes or so, I had to take the glasses off and rest my eyes for a minute and that lessened my enjoyment of the movie, I think.

There are some movies that use it in a way that I enjoy, and those are movies like PIRANHA 3D and A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR CHRISTMAS. Those movies basically just poked fun at the 3D genre for an hour and twenty minutes and it was over. That kind of thing I can handle, but big epic, sweeping serious movies in 3D I can't.

That's what bothered me about HUGO so much. Normally, I love Martin Scorsese movies (with a few exceptions like BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, KUNDUN, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE) and there were aspects of HUGO that I loved, but it had a couple of huge problems that I just couldn't get past.

First of all, it didn't need to be 3D. He used it in a great way, but I didn't think it added anything to the story and when it comes on HBO in six months, some of the shot selections are just going to look strange and unnecessary. There were parts that were amazingly well done and the 3D technology was utilized well, but that's all. I just kept thinking about how much more I would have enjoyed it had I not had to keep taking my glasses off.

Second, it was too long. At 125 minutes, kids will (and definitely were in the screening I saw) start to get restless. I know it's an adaptation of a kids book (that I've never read), but from what I hear there were a lot of things added to it that extended the running time that maybe didn't need to be there. I don't know that for sure, but it was still too long.

That said, every actor in the film did an amazing job and the story is pretty good, but it's more like Martin Scorsese's love letter to film than a family/kids movie. I think that's where it lost a lot of casual viewers and why most critics were so kind to it.

There are A LOT of nods and references to the beginning of film, old movies and the growth of cinema. If you've spent years in film classes learning these kinds of things (like I have) or have just seen and are able to appreciate those early films (like most critics), you're in on it and it's fascinating. If you're not in on it, and you have no idea what they're talking about, it doesn't resonate. The people I saw it with, all of whom range in age from 19 up to 33 and have never seen any of the films referenced didn't care much for it.

The Film Stage did a nice job the other day of compiling a list of '10 Classic Films You Must Watch Before Seeing Martin Scorsese's HUGO.' It's a great, informative list and there are streaming copies of each film and a little write-up of what they are, what they meant and how they inspired the film. It's a really fascinating piece and if you have any interest in film history, they're all great to watch.

But it's also 10 films you need to watch in order to understand the importance of what HUGO is about for Scorsese. That's where the problem is.

I guess the bottom line is, if you're a film nerd like me and know what all of the movies on the Film Stage list are, check out HUGO and enjoy Scorsese's love letter to movies, because there's no one that does it better and there are very few filmmakers who have been able to stay at the top of their game for so long—seriously, Scorsese has been consistently great for nearly 40 years.

But if you're just an average filmgoer, this might not be for you.

RILL RILL

Even though those Heavy Metal Shop hoodies are ridiculously overpriced, I like the fact that so many bands still sport them.
Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill from momandpopmusic on Vimeo.

SO CLOSE...

I don't think anyone can comprehend how excited I am to see this movie. I just want Thanksgiving dinner to be over so I can be sitting in the theater already.

WE SOLD OUR SOUL FOR ROCK N ROLL

So, Collapse.

We started practicing again last weekend. We didn't want to try and get a practice space since we didn't know if we were going to keep playing beyond this show, so we had to look for an alternative. We found one.

Clint's boss is letting us practice in their shop. They build custom covers for boats and have room for us to set up and even extra space so we can leave our shit there. That's the best part, because I didn't want to have to pack up my cabinet every time we practiced.

The only problem is that we don't have a lot of equipment. Well, I do. No one else does.

Clint is missing half his drum hardware and his throne. He's using a chair from an old boat they had lying around. We have no P.A. so Richard is yelling through a road cone—which works surprisingly well. Adam doesn't have a bass amp at all, so he stands around and plays along with his bass not plugged in to anything. Nathan sold his head, so he's using a 12" practice amp turned up as loud as it will go. I still have all my stuff, so I just stand on the 4-wheeler that's next to my cabinet to make myself taller.

The good news is that we already know 5 songs.

Whatever works, right?

BRAVE

Pixar is still batting a thousand in my eyes (maybe because I've never seen CARS or CARS 2, and deliberately so) and their next movie looks like they're going to keep it up.

Pretty happy they finally found a way to have a female protagonist, too. Changes things up a bit.

THE TITLE DESIGNS OF SAUL BASS

If anyone ever says they're not really a fan of Saul Bass is either lying or an idiot.

In honor of the new book Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, a really cool website called Art of the Title (which I've mentioned before) has put together a little video of a bunch of his best title designs for movies. Really, really good stuff.

And if you don't know who Saul Bass is, read up on him a bit. Then you'll know where your favorite artists steal most of their stuff from.

And if anyone is looking for Christmas presents for me, the book mentioned above is a great place to start.

Enjoy.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

It was the Sundance darling with the new IT girl of indie film—Elizabeth Olsen. It's haunting, riveting, disturbing, brilliant and 85% fantastic.

The last 15% percent is where I had a huge problem. I'm all for ambiguity and "art" films, but Jesus Christ  filmmakers, finish your fucking stories. If you're going to make me sit there for an hour and half, get me interested in these characters and invested in their lives at least have the decency to give me a little bit of closure. That's all I want and I don't feel that's too much to ask for.

I really, really liked this movie. Olsen did a fantastic job and John Hawkes, as the cult leader Patrick, has been great in pretty much everything he's ever been in, I was invested in what was going on and I didn't look at my phone to check the time through the whole thing. Those are all things that add up to a great cinematic experience for me.

But at the end of the movie, when the screen went black and the credits started rolling, I did mutter ever so quietly to myself "Are you fucking kidding me?"

I didn't need an explosive finale or anything like that but, like I said before, a little bit of closure would be nice.

Aside from that, first time writer/director Sean Durkin made a hell of a debut. He's able to switch back and forth between past and present convincingly, and Olsen kills it the entire time. I did want to know more about why she joined the cult in the first place, what exactly Patrick's end goal is, because as far as I can tell, it wasn't a religious cult. There are lots of unanswered questions on that front, which I was okay with. That was fine.

It's just that I think Durkin wanted the ending to be far more powerful than it was. It was so close to being great but right at the very end all the air went out when it shouldn't have.

So close.

MY FRIENDS OVER YOU - 108

Sometimes I need a little push—a little something to get me going on this blog. Granted, I'm doing way better than I was couple months ago, but I still only update a couple of times a week. The list I have next to my computer is starting to get longer again, so that's good, but I also wanted to throw out a new weekly feature.

Just like the title implies, it's called MY FRIENDS OVER YOU (and yes, it is named after the incredibly catchy, sort of cheesy guilty pleasure song by New Found Glory).

Every monday, I'm going to pick one of my friends that has a blog (and I have a lot) that I routinely check and enjoy and talk about how much I like them and why you should look at their stuff, too.

So, shall we?

This is my friend Colby. We met somewhere around the turn of the century (I've always wanted to use that phrase) and we quickly bonded over awesome things like veganism, Rage Against the Machine and our love of surface piercing. Okay, that last one is a total lie, but Colby is a fine piercer. He worked at Good Times Tattoo for a long, long time and managed a short lived vegan coffee shop down by Gateway called Under the Bridge (because he was/still is way in to Red Hot Chili Peppers, but he'll never admit it). He even came on tour with Cherem for a week, but then had to get back home to make sure everything at the coffee shop was okay.

Then, while we were still on tour, he packed his shit up and moved to New York City—and that's where he's been since summer of 2006. Well, mostly. He likes to take off a lot to random countries and wander around until he runs out of money and has to go back to piercing famous actors and beautiful models that come through New York Adorned.

He also has a weird obsession with the number 108. He sees it everywhere. So naturally, after we saw THE RING years ago, we were hanging out at his apartment and while he was in the bathroom, I set the sleep timer on his TV so that it would turn on at 1:08 AM to a channel that he didn't get. It was hilarious.

But anyway, he's a great dude and you should really be checking his blog on a pretty regular basis. It's got good stuff.

108 Manifestations - J. Colby Smith.

TODAY'S LESSON

THE BLACK LIST

I'm a film nerd. Always have been and always will be. I used to spend at least an hour a day combing through various movie websites/blogs taking in as much as I could.

I don't do it so much anymore, because I'm at a point where I'd much rather the movie speak for itself and be what it is rather than what it could have been.

One of the few posts I still get somewhat excited for each year is the release of THE BLACK LIST. Usually put out in late November or early December, THE BLACK LIST was started in 2006 by a young exec at Leo DiCaprio's production company. He e-mailed a bunch of his peers and asked that they send him their favorite scripts that might be in development but definitely aren't in production. It started with around 100 people and now sits at around 250 and each year, everyone's suggestions get tallied up and they release a list of them. There's never a set number of how many are on the list, because each year more and more entries are on it, but the most popular ones are always the highest.

I always had a love/hate relationship with the list, but never for any very personal reasons. It's just that I'd see what was on the list, see what it was about and get equal parts happy and bummed. Happy because it would be a great idea with (apparently) a really clever, well written script. Sad because everyone in Hollywood was too busy trying to get a sequel or a remake off the ground to take any chances on really good scripts.

Then, a couple years ago, movies that were on the black list started getting made and coming out. That's when my opinion of THE BLACK LIST started to change. I used to think it would be an amazing movie, but that wasn't always the case.

Sure, there were a few that lived up to the hype, but a lot more that made you wonder how they made it on the list in the first place.

Here's a few movies that debuted on the black list and then came out in theaters a little while later.

JUNO, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (top vote getters the first year), CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, STATE OF PLAY, FARRAGUT NORTH (re-titled IDES OF MARCH), THE ROAD, ADVENTURELAND, ZOMBIELAND, THE WRESTLER, I'M WITH CANCER (re-titled 50/50), INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, NOWHERE BOY, UP IN THE AIR, EASY A, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, CEDAR RAPIDS, CRAZY STUPID LOVE.

Good stuff, right? Not great stuff, but (mostly) all movies I've seen and liked. The problem is that for every good movie on that list, there's another movie that was on it that I didn't like at all. Like these.

THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE, FANBOYS, RENDITION, SEVEN POUNDS, SOURCE CODE, VALKYRIE, JENNIFER'S BODY, THE BEAVER, FUCKBUDDIES (re-titled NO STRINGS ATTACHED), A COUPLE OF DICKS (re-titled COP OUT), BAD TEACHER, TOWER HEIST.

See that last one? TOWER HEIST? Well, I saw that movie a few days ago and felt that before I dive in to writing about it, I had to give a little background.

THE BLACK LIST still has some good stuff on it (actually a lot more than I thought) but it's probably close to a 50/50 split on the good versus the bad.

But there are some really bad finished products.

For instance...

TOWER HEIST

I wanted this movie to be good. I really did. It had a script that was on The Black List, it's a heist movie (written by the guy that wrote OCEAN'S 11, which explains a few things), it has Matthew Broderick in it and it also has Eddie Murphy. That last part was huge for me. With the exception of the SHREK movies (which kind of don't count), Murphy hasn't made a watchable movie since BOWFINGER way back in 1999.

And listen, I'll defend BOWFINGER until the end of time. That movie is hilarious and fantastic.

But back to Murphy. He's one of the best comedians of all time but he hasn't wanted to do anything other than shitty kids movies for the past decade and a half. Way back when Quentin Tarantino was talking about writing INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, he made a point of saying he was writing a part for Eddie Murphy. Then, the script changed and I have no idea if there was a part for him in the finished version, if he was offered one and turned it down or anything else. But that's beside the point. He was in TOWER HEIST and from the trailers, it looked like he might be back. So yeah, I wanted it to be good.

Well, wanted and expected are two different things.

Brett Ratner is the director of TOWER HEIST, so my actual expectations were very, very low. But still a guy can hope, right?

Bottom line is that TOWER HEIST is terrible. I thought Todd Phillips was a lazy filmmaker, but I totally forgot about Brett Ratner.

TOWER HEIST could have been a great movie, but Ratner just doesn't care about making it great. He cares about getting it done, hanging out with famous people in New York City and get paid millions of dollars to dick around with a camera and funny guys for a few months. But he definitely doesn't care about doing things right or, god forbid, making sure that parts of the plot make sense.

Because that's the real problem with TOWER HEIST: It doesn't make any fucking sense. There are huge issues with the basic premise that could have been worked out. It might have taken a few more passes at the script, but they could have found a clever way to make it all work. But they didn't.

That's why I'm not sure why it ended up on the Black List. Did Ratner and his crew change it so much that they just left huge chunks out figuring that no one would notice or care?

There are a few good things about the movie though, and that's every second of the maybe 25 minutes that Murphy is actually in the movie. Yep. You read that right. He's in the movie for maybe 25 minutes of the entire running time.

I was going to make a very spoiler-filled list of everything that didn't make sense in the movie, but Eric D. Snider already did that, which kind of saves me the trouble.

I'm going to say that TOWER HEIST was about 1/4 good, kinda funny and somewhat entertaining. It had all the ingredients to be great, but Ratner was just too lazy to actually do it.

Don't see it. It'll be one of those movies that's on FX or TBS or TNT 8 times a year in the near future. You can DVR it and fast forward through everything that doesn't have Eddie Murphy in it. Then you might actually think it's half decent.

A HISTORY OF BAD MEN

This might be the best unofficial music video of all time.

DANZIG IS, INDEED, A GOD DAMN SON OF A BITCH

Fun, Fun, Fun Fest happened over the weekend in Texas. I would have loved to go, except for the fact that I hate both fests and Texas.

A lot of cool bands played, which would have been fun to see, but more importantly, Danzig played. Kind of.

Danzig, much like Metallica, has only gone downhill over the past few years. Once upon a time, he was a metal god that could do no wrong and before that, he was a punk rock icon. But that was a long time ago, before things like this happened and things like this happened.

Now, he's just a cranky old man who stands around awkwardly in bad videos for even worse songs. He could also give J-Lo a run for her money in the diva department.

Over at Punknews.org, they've taken the liberty of putting together Fun, Fun, Fun Fest organizer Graham Williams' rundown of his Day with Danzig this past Friday.

Glenn flies in this morning and says he has a cold, and doesn't feel like playing the show. He demands French onion soup and vitamins brought to his hotel suite. He wants to soup now and wants it hot. We get it.
Glenn says it's freezing in Austin and he can't go on. Says it's going to be 28 degrees tonight and he won't perform (keep in mind, it's currently 71 and sunny with a night forecast of maybe 50+). He says we have to move the show/festival inside if we want him to play (obviously, that's not possible).
We rent stage heaters (no other bands, public enemy, mcd, passion pit, etc need or want heaters on stage... It's warm up there and not cold out) for glenn per demand, as well as bring in an onsite doctor to make him happy and be there if his cold doesn't go away.
Glenn arrives at 7:45 (half hour before showtime, they go on at 8:15 exactly and have a 90 min set. Park curfew by the city/police is 10pm sharp). When he arrives, he says he's not going to play. Says he doesn't like how the banners are hung on stage, and doesn't like the lighting or stage size (all this was advanced in email and phone, well in advance, and the band/crew loaded in mid day, and were happy with it, and said it would work. Stage wasn't small at all). He wouldn't leave his trailer to go look at the stage, though, so the lighting company drew up specs for him to look at, of the stage lighting 50 feet from his trailer, and brought it to him to look over and prove him wrong.
In the meantime, Glenn's bodyguard gets pushy (literally) with Murder City Devils' manager, and tells them they can't have their friends watch MCD from stage, and wants them to cut their set. Kicks them off stage and gets physical with the band and staff. Oh, also Danzig says he's just as big as Slayer, and Slayer is playing a bigger stage on sunday, and that's bullshit and wants to play the same stage slayer is playing... or won't play. Makes him look bad.
It's now 8:15 and time for them to go on. The band is ready, corpse make up's done, guitars tuned. Glenn says he's not playing, and that it's too cold outside. He said big stages should have windscreen, so wind can't blow on him from the side. The stage managers then go and gets tarps, and tarp the entire side of the stage so no wind will hit him.
It's now 8:40. we explain that it's cutting into the set, and he's going to have cut the 90 min set if he doesn't play soon, as park curfew is 10. He says he doesn't feel like playing. Says "I got a deathbug. If i go on stage and get sick, I'll die. I'm not getting sicker for this show" (NOTE: He totally looks and seems fine... No coughing, no paleness, no vomiting, just some balding and a gut, from what i can tell). We get the Dr and he says he can do a b12 shot or anything he needs if he feels bad. Danzig says he only treats illnesses naturally, so won't do that. We finally get him to agree to play and have already informed his crew that it's only 60 mins (9pm at this point) and they start cutting some songs from the set list, so they can still do Misfits, but obviously didn't cut enough.
They went on almost an hour late due to the HANDS DOWN biggest rock star moment we've ever dealt with, and then he tries to start a riot and blames the fest, the city, the cops and everyone, but himself.Goes backstage and tries to fight a few people, and gets in the van and leaves.

Sounds like an awesome time, right? Even Slayer had to get in a few jabs at him. Now, of course, this is only one side to the story, but if anyone doesn't believe it, they've never had a run-in with Danzig before. I believe it. I've also had a run-in with Danzig before and can tell you firsthand that he is, indeed, a god damn son of a bitch.

THE TIMES, THEY ARE A CHANGIN'

Engaged, Pre-engaged (don't ask) and Engaged/Expecting Father. Time flies when you're having fun.

KING OF THE WORLD

Weird that I've never been to the top of the Library until today.

THE RUM DIARY

I said it before we saw it and I'll say it again now: I'm always weary of a movie that's been trying to get made for the better part of a decade, because there's a reason it never got off the ground.

THE RUM DIARY is no exception to that thought. I really wanted to like it, but just wasn't able to get excited about it at all. Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favorite writers and Johnny Depp is a fine actor, but too many PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies and one shitty Tim Burton movie after another have ruined him for me.

This movie just felt like it was never sure what it wanted to be. Should it be a romance? A slapstick comedy? A weird, drug induced adventure? A love story? A political thriller?

Then someone said, "Well, let's put it all in there but not really understand how to balance them all."

And having Johnny Depp reprise the role he played so well in FEAR AND LOATHING seemed like a no-brainer, but no one wanted RUM DIARY to feel like a shitty rehash of FEAR, so they tried everything to make it different, but it just didn't work. It just didn't work for me and I was bored for the better part of two hours.

Probably the best part of THE RUM DIARY is the part that very few people know exist. Back in 2001, a small movie studio called The Shooting Gallery bought the rights to Thompson's book, but never really did anything with it. It seemed like it was one of those things where a studio would buy an option with no intention of actually making the movie just so no one else could. The Shooting Gallery was run by a woman named Holly Sorenson, who before becoming the president of production, had worked notable jobs like bartender at Wrigley Field, personal shopper at Saks Fifth Avenue and personal assistant to Gloria Steinem. All of which reinforce Kevin Smith's claim that in Hollywood you simply fail upwards.

Since nothing was happening with THE RUM DIARY, an enraged Hunter S. Thompson fired off one of his fantastic trademark rants, directed solely at her. And you know it's going to be good when the first line is "Okay, you lazy bitch, I'm getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround."

Read the letter below. Then read the book. Probably skip the movie.

FUTURE ISLANDS

I really like this band.

COMMUNITY

I love this show. For many more reasons than just these two, but these are two pretty great reasons.

THIS DAY SO HALLOWED

You know what made this year's Halloween different from like the last 6?

I actually dressed up this year. Twice.

Okay, maybe 'dressed up' is a little too strong a word (or two). Usually I'm at work all day on Halloween, and dressing up while serving tables is awkward and not very fun. Also, I usually don't do anything on Halloween weekend because I have to be up at 6:30 in the morning. Mostly though, I think of an awesome costume idea sometime on Saturday and spend 2 hours in the evening trying to put that specific costume together and give up when it's not working.

Last time I actually dressed up was somewhere around 2005. It was a hell of a costume though, as you can see.

Pretty good, right? And that hair ain't too bad either, if I do say so myself.

This year, even though I didn't really have any plans for Halloween, I wanted to make a costume that would be easy to carry around—one that I could just leave in my car and put on if something came up. And I decided on the perfect one—Kuato from TOTAL RECALL. The thing about this costume was that anyone that knew who I was would be really excited, but anyone that didn't would just stare at me blankly. That's what a good costume does. It was pretty easy to make, mostly because it was horribly shoddy.

I did have to tear apart three dolls to make it work, but those cost me a grand total of $1.50 from the thrift store, the chest piece was a whopping $13 and the rubber cement was two bucks. Perfect price for not having anything planned.

Work was a different story. I thought I might get better tips if people saw that I was in the spirit of the holiday, but that wasn't quite the case. I couldn't wear Kuato to work because it was uncomfortable and not very appropriate, so I had to come up with something else. I settled on wearing a jersey and shorts and being an NBA player forced to get a new job. Unfortunately no one got it and most just thought I wore pajamas to work. And tipped like shit because of it.

Oh well. I was proud of myself. Even went to a couple of Hallween parties to celebrate by standing around, silently judging everyone else's costumes. 

It was weird not seeing an overkill of one specific costume like in years past—a la Heath Ledger's Joker. I think the one costume I saw the most of was a Black Swan. But even then, I only saw maybe three (and one White Swan).

Am I wrong? Was there another pop culture costume that people just drove into the ground (discounting zombies)?

All in all, I felt it was a successful weekend and some pretty good costumes on my part.

This was an amazing piece to read, wasn't it.

TOY BOX

REUNITED

Collapse played its last show in April of 2010. It wasn't supposed to be our last show, but after we got back from Peru everyone just got busy and didn't really have the time, energy or the desire to keep going.

We have a whole bunch of stuff partially recorded—some of it we like and some of it we don't, some of it we changed after we did a rough pre-production track. There's probably 11 songs recorded altogether. Richard finished vocals for three of them, one we never finished writing a second guitar part and a bunch of instrumentals.

I dug them all out of my hard drive the other day because there's a good chance we're going to start playing again. Probably won't be much more than a show in December and hopefully get Richard to finish recording the vocals on the songs we still like. If the last part happens, we'll probably just put together a little EP and give it away via the Internet.

The ones that are actually finished (or very close to it) I put up on my SoundCloud page. If you're a fan of heavy, dark, fast hardcore, you'll probably be in to it. If you're not in to that stuff, you probably won't like it. But give it a shot. You might be surprised.

And I'll be sure to keep you posted about what we're doing. I'm having a hard time remembering how to play some of this stuff, so we'll see how that goes.

Tracks are embedded after the break to make the page load easier.

IMPORTANT THINGS - OCTOBER, 2011

Ladies and Gentelmen, welcome to trevorhale.com.

I've had this blog for a few years now, and while it was left neglected for most of the summer, I'm kind of back on the horse. 

This is my little corner of the Internet where I show you stuff I like, stuff I don't like, things I write, movies I want to see, bands I want to listen to and so on and so forth.

I've got a few other social networking sites and I try to keep content different for each one.

Instagram (@trevorhale) is for making my bullshit pictures look fancy and one of the reasons I was most excited for an iPhone. I know the user etiquette and won't flood your feed with pictures of my cats or things I'm eating. I promise.

Twitter (also @trevorhale) is for jokes and random thoughts contained to 140 characters or less. I think I'm hilarious and so do at least 3 other people.

Tumblr is for me to waste my time and reblog pictures that I like and keep up with the lives of people I'll never meet in real life. 

Join the party. Follow me here, there and anywhere else you might want to.

And don't be afraid to drop me a line and tell me what you think.

I'm here to help you kill time by telling you all the things you never knew you wanted to know.

"IT CAME WITH THE FRAME"

If anyone has a lead on a huge house, let me know. These all need to be framed and hung, but I've got no room.

KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE

I should have learned my lesson by now, but I haven't. 

The lesson, of course, is to stop loaning out my favorite books because I never get them back.

I've purchased Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs four times and this is my third copy of Killing Yourself to Live. I keep loaning them out because I want people to appreciate them the way I do, but it never quite works out that way. It usually just ends up like this:

"How did you like that book?"

"What book?"

"*Insert book title here*? You asked if you could borrow it a while ago?"

"Ohhhh, yeah! I haven't gotten to it yet. I still have it though. I'm excited to read it."

Usually the phrase 'I still have it, though' is code for 'Oh shit. I lost that book like two days after you loaned it to me, forgot the title and haven't thought about it since.'

The bottom line is that I found this book for dirt cheap, so I didn't feel too bad shelling out a few more bucks to read again.

It's a road trip story in which Chuck Klosterman (a guy you'll either love like I do or wholeheartedly despise) drives cross country and visits the site where significant rock stars died. He then examines what it meant to their career, and in a lot of cases, them dying was probably the best thing to happen to their fame.

It starts at the Chelsea Hotel where Sid and Nancy died and ends in Seattle at the home of Kurt Cobain. And through the trip, all he has is time to reflect and over analyze hundreds of songs, their meanings and how they relate to his life.

It's a great read if you're a fan of music, rock stars, fame and the whole 'only the good die young' mantra.

Pick it up and hold on to it.

Definitely don't loan it out. You'll never see it again.

CITY TO CITY

This is my love letter to City to City. I'm not ashamed of it at all.

For those that don't know, City to City is a band from Salt Lake that I absolutely loved. Granted, I'm great friends with every single person in the band, but that doesn't change the way I feel about their music. It was a great mix of hardcore, post-hardcore, rock & roll and good old punk rock.

They were a great live band and people loved watching them, because they were one of the rare SLC bands that had great sing-a-long choruses. That's not to say that other bands didn't try to write those parts, it's just that none of them did it as well as City to City did.

I tagged along the weekend they recorded and took my video camera to try and make some sort of documentary out of it for my old blog, Grudge City Activities. I managed to get some really good footage and I was actually pretty happy with the way it turned out.

The EP they recorded that weekend ranks among one of my favorite SLCHC releases to date and if you haven't heard it, you should.

You can download the entire thing for free by clicking this link.

Also, if you're interested, there's a whole bunch of old SLCHC releases in the GCA Music Archive—all free.

But back to City to City.

One of the best bands to have around and I miss them. This is all the footage I shot during that weekend and made in to 4 separate videos.

*Edited to Add*

I put a break before the videos because the page was taking forever to load, and that's not a good thing. So hit the jump to see the rest of the post. It's worth it.

BEETEETH

My man Dan Christofferson—you may remember him from such posts as Terrible. Gentle. Man., The Bees Knees, and Top 5 Anythings - 2010‚—has another can't miss art show this weekend that requires your attendance.

He's been killing it lately with all kinds of different formats and this weekend at Cathedral Tattoo (249 East 400 South, SLC, UT) will be no different.

Lately, his work has focused a lot on images and impressions that our state—and the west in general—is known for, twisting and interpreting them to resemble his feelings.

Hints have been dropping all over his Instagram/Twitter feed (@robotwithwings), which if you're not following, you should be. There is also a little preview of what's to come hanging in the Trolley Square Whole Foods.

But make sure you come out this Friday night for what's likely to be the last Gallery Stroll where we'll have good, tolerable, walking-around-outside weather for the next five or six months. There are bound to be a few other good galleries (like Blonde Grizzly's Monster Show), but this is one you shouldn't miss.

See you there?

WELL DONE, RANGERS

No one watches baseball anymore. Everyone thinks it's too boring and wants no part of it.

Not me.

I still love game and it was one of my favorite parts of coming home from work after a long Sunday, when I could grab some food and watch a bit of the Sunday night game on TV.

And I really loved the last day of the season when there were four teams (two in the AL and two in the NL) fighting for that one playoff spot. I got to see Papelbon blow a lead that cost the Red Sox the season and watch Evan Longoria hit a ball that barely cleared the fence, sending the Rays to the playoffs.

The playoffs were pretty good and though I still have a tough time rooting for Texas-based teams, this summer has done a lot to sway me away from that.

First the Mavericks put on one of the most memorable runs I can remember and as much as I wanted to, I just couldn't bring myself to root against them.

Then, the Rangers just looked so damn good that they deserved every win they got (and hopefully get, since I don't much care for the Cardinals).

But one thing that stood out after the Rangers beat the Tigers in that last game—their on-field celebration. Every team that makes the World Series celebrates on the field, so that's no surprise, but still—the Rangers did it a little differently.

See that picture up top there? That's the Rangers dousing each other with Ginger Ale.

Not champagne.

I wrote about it last year, when they made the World Series for the first time in 50 years, but it's worth mentioning again. The on-field celebration with Ginger Ale has become their new thing as a way to include recovering addict, and one of the Rangers' most important assets, Josh Hamilton and their number 1 pitcher, C.J. Wilson, who is Straight Edge.

They still do the champagne and beer in the clubhouse later, with Hamilton and Wilson hanging out elsewhere, but it's awesome that the Rangers found a way—and cared enough—to make such a seemingly insignificant change to postseason tradition mean so much.

And I have to ask again—how am I supposed to hate Texas when they do stuff like that?

THE BECOMING (STILL)

Such a great band.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT WAS AWESOME

I love this story.

"October 14, 1912 -  

Minutes before giving a speech on a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt is shot in an assassination attempt.  

The would-be assassin’s bullet is slowed down after travelling through a steel eyeglass case and the folded, fifty page speech he intended to give, stopping in his chest. Realizing that he wasn’t coughing up blood, Roosevelt figured he was well enough to go ahead and deliver his speech rather than rush to the hospital.  

He spoke for the next 90 minutes, opening with the words: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.'  

Doctors deemed it too risky to remove the bullet, and Roosevelt carried it with him inside his body for the rest of his life."

WEEKENDERS

END OF THE LINE

You'll be missed, old friend.

YOU VANDAL

Wise words from the neighborhood vandal.

ONLY LIVING WITNESS

This is one of the songs that would be on the mix tape that only myself and Dan Fletcher would listen to.

WILD THING

This post was shamelessly stolen from my man Destin over at Steady Clappin'. Make sure you head over there at some point and check it out. He does good work and makes way better mix tapes than I could, which is why I never started. Well, that and not enough people want a mix tape full of Life of Agony, Into Another, Only Living Witness and Helmet. But I digress....

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."  —Maurice Sendak

WHAT HELMET LAWS ARE FOR

Antelope - 1
Mountain Bike Dork - 0

"SORRY GENTLEMEN, THE LAW IS THE LAW"

This has been floating around the Internet for years but I just came across it via Badass Digest. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were required to fill out a customs form declaring what they brought back to the U.S. after Apollo 11 touched down off the coast of Hawaii.

No, really. They actually did.

BREAKING BAD

This show just gets better and better. This is the first season I was able to keep up with as it aired and that's basically because I spend too much time on the Internet and didn't want anything spoiled for me.

That said, after watching the Season 4 finale this past Sunday, I can safely say that I haven't wanted been this excited for the next season in a long time—probably since the end of LOST season 3. (You know, the first flash forward episode.)

I spent the morning reading the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, break down this season episode by episode and the more I read, the more brilliant I think he is. Everything about this show is great, the writing, the casting, the direction, the music, and my God, the acting. Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and especially Giancarlo Esposito are all fantastic.

I can't wait for it all to come crashing down next season. Too bad we have to wait until July 2012 for it to start again.

Two more things:

1) Don't click this link unless you're 100% caught up. But for the rest of you that are, this is "that shot." You know, the one (or at least one of them) that made us all go 'You've got to be fucking kidding me!' and then 'Holy shit!'

2) I haven't been able to stop listening to this song since Sunday night.

THRILLS AND CHILLS

For the past few weeks I've been hitting a bunch of haunted houses around the city for an article I was writing for City Weekly. I actually enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected. Once the article goes into the archives I'll have the whole thing up on here. But until then, head over to their site and check it out or grab this week's issue.

City Weekly -- You might think that if you’ve seen one haunted house, you’ve seen them all—but that’s not entirely true. Though there are common themes, no two haunts are exactly the same. Each has its own distinct vision of providing a good, old-fashioned scare.

Read the rest of the article by clicking the link.

Castle of Chaos

Nightmare on 13th

Strangling Brothers

Fear Factory

SICK OF MY FACE YET?

I like uploading pictures here way more than Flickr or Facebook. I don't really know why, but it'll probably continue. You're cool with that, right?

Flamingos. Always Flamingos.

@nomoregardner

Chief.

World Champions.

Art.

1/2 a happy couple. Just here though.

All of the lights.

Hangin' on the corner of 52nd and Broadway...

So close to smiling.

More art.