FAIR GAME

Oh, George W. Bush. Will the world ever run out of things from your Presidency to place under a microscope and get people riled up all over again?

Probably not.

FAIR GAME is the story of CIA operative whose cover was blown by a White House leak to columnist Robert Novak. Not to be confused with the movie of the same name from the mid-90s where Cindy Crawford takes her top off.

Naomi Watts plays Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson is played by Sean Penn and while both give strong performances, the overall movie felt a little weak. I did like that they kept the focus on the two main characters without editorializing on the Bush administration that was composed of crooks and liars who cared only about their own political power and personal gain. None of them cared whether they threw someone under the bus as long as it helped them out, and that's the gist of the whole Plame story.

Doug Liman does a good job of maintaining focus on the characters and not letting them get lost in what could have easily turned into "Fuck George Bush!" film. Liman is fond of using a handheld camera for his films, giving it a documentary-like feel but it doesn't have quite the same effect here as it did in his other films like THE BOURNE IDENTITY. It gets a little distracting at times.

FAIR GAME isn't going to crack even my Top 20 films of the year, but it did its job and filled up an otherwise boring Sunday evening. Or, if you feel like getting mad at shit that happened nearly 10 years ago all over again, look no further.

COOL HAND, LUKE

Matt Ranzetta is a graphic designer and a few days before Thanksgiving, he put up a series of movie posters on his blog. They were a mash-up, I guess you'd call it, of Star Wars images and other movie titles. He probably didn't think anything of them aside from that they'd be fun to do and some people would find them clever.

Then the rest of the Internet found out.

Now, these posters are EVERYWHERE—all over Tumblr and Facebook and legit movie blogs, too. Ranzetta scrambled to make shirts and prints available and now probably doesn't have to worry about Christmas money this year (or next year, either).

Just goes to show what a little creativity can do sometimes.

The rest of the images are at his blog.

THE BEES KNEES

Dan Christofferson is a god amongst men. He's got a gallery show at Blonde Grizzly next month that you can bet I'll be telling you more about.

A HUGE thank you to him for getting this done on relatively short notice. We didn't give him any sort of direction because we trusted his judgements and he knocked it out of the park.

You can see more of his stuff at his website, Beeteeth.com. And if you see him around, shake his hand and tell him how awesome he is. He likes that kind of stuff.

By the way, this is the cover of the Tamerlane teaser I posted a couple of weeks back. It comes out this weekend.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

I didn't want that racist kid to be the top post on the site, so here's a baby panda that was born a month ago in Atlanta! He won't be named until he's 100 days old, per Chinese tradition.

They'll probably name it Rex. At least they should.

Also, I just learned that China owns every Panda in the world, even if they were born here. And Australia owns every kangaroo.

What the fuck do we own? Buffalo? Communists.

YOU'RE KIDDING, RIGHT?

This might be one of the worst things I've ever seen. It's hilarious, but it's also very, very sad. I wonder if these kids even understands what they're talking about, because they're obviously reading a script that someone else wrote.



And there's a whole bunch more of these, too. He "reviews" the Naked Brother Band show. According to Andrew, it's about kids in a band, one of which is part Chinese, there's also a black and the rest of them "is white and maybe Jewish." or the MARMADUKE review that just goes off into some weird white pride tangent.

And it's all part of some website called WhitePrideTV that looks like a Geocities site from the late 90s, but maybe that's what they were going for. Who really has time to learn how to build a proper website these days when there's far more important things going on like, as Andrew here says, "race mixing is wrong."

I can't believe this is a real thing. I mean, I can, nothing really shocks me anymore because the Internet is a weird, weird place. But still...

ICONS

Then

And Now

And while we're at it, someone should make this picture poster size. I would buy it, frame it and hang it in my home. In a heartbeat. It's one of my favorite pictures ever. It may even replace FDR.

DANGEROUS MINDS

EDIT: Nope, down again. One of these times I'm going to figure out how to just rip the tracks from the YouTube videos and upload them myself. Then ABKCO will come after me for billions of dollars, because God knows Kieth Richards and Mick Jagger don't have quite enough money.

I think the Dangerous Minds blog is going to be my new favorite website.

Yesterday, they had a post in which they isolated every track from "Gimme Shelter", which is probably the second most popular Rolling Stones song behind "Satisfaction" and it's brilliant. Even though that song has been overused in just about every movie trailer of the past 20 years, it's still a great song and one of my favorites. To hear everything isolated the way like that is really something cool. I've always appreciated the subtle nuances of that song and to be able to hear it all piece by piece makes it even more impressive, I think.

The vocal track is probably the one that stands out the most, though.



The rest of the tracks are posted here and I suggest listening to them all. Even Charlie Watts' drum track is listenable on its own.

I get the feeling a lot of people were stoked on this, because they posted another one today. This time, it's The Beatles "Helter Skelter" and once again, the vocal track is probably the best one. Although, John Lennon playing bass with no subtlety whatsoever is also pretty cool to hear. I've embedded the vocal track below, but you can hear the rest of the tracks on the Dangerous Minds blog post.

I HATE GUITAR CENTER

Let me tell you a little story. This started about two weeks ago and came to the stunning conclusion yesterday afternoon. I've been alluding to it for the past little while via Twitter, and now you'll finally get to hear the entire thing, but it's a long one, so bear with me. It's the story of a guy and his guitar...

The first guitar I ever owned was a Washburn acoustic that I got for Christmas when I was 12. I didn't do much with it for the first couple of years; I knew how to play the basic chords and could cheat my way through "Wild Thing" and "Gloria" and easy stuff like that, so it was fine. When I was 15, I got an electric guitar (which I still have) and the acoustic rarely got touched after that. The Washburn was a good guitar, but it wasn't very fun to play.

The strings were really hard to push down and I couldn't file the nut down without the strings dragging along the frets, so it got played less and less. Then it just started to break down. One of the tuning keys broke off and I had to replace it with one that looked nothing like the rest of them. Another time, my friend Chad came over, put on Motley Crue, grabbed the guitar and started dancing around and hit the bottom on the corner of my desk. It put a nice sized hole in the body, but didn't affect the way it sounded, so I wasn't too bummed.

Cut to all these years later and I don't really have a band anymore and I live in an apartment, so I never hook my guitar up to an amplifier. I tried playing my acoustic a few times and it just wasn't fun. Still hard to play and even harder to keep in tune. So I decided I needed a new one, especially if I was going to become a successful singer/songwriter like that dreamy Dashboard Confessional fella.

I've never been a huge fan of Guitar Center, but I feel its a necessary evil. Whenever we had to stop there on tour was always my least favorite thing to do. We'd end up there for hours and about halfway through, I'd always be back in the hot van waiting for the rest of them. I drove to the one in Salt Lake a couple of weeks ago, which takes about 20-25 minutes to get to from my house. Not a huge deal, but it's not a quick trip either.

I went in to the acoustic room, looked around and played a couple for a few minutes before I found one that I really liked. I grabbed it and the guy behind the counter (who was one the phone) waved me over. I stood there for about 5 minutes while he finished his phone call before he started to ring me up. My GC card had been deactivated, so I had to go through the process of reactivating it, which wasn't a big deal, but I had to follow him to three different spots around the store before we finally got back to his counter in the acoustic room. He asked if I wanted a case and the three-year warranty in case anything happened. I agreed to both of them, he grabbed the guitar from the back and case from next to the counter and sent me on my way.

When I got home, I immediately opened the box, excited to embark on my solo career. One problem: it was the wrong guitar. It was the guitar that I picked out, just not the right color. Not the biggest deal, but if I'm buying a guitar, I want it to be the one I want. So I called back out there, talked to the guy that sold it to me and asked if they had the right color. He assured me that they did and told me I could come back out to exchange it. He was concerned and wanted to make it right, but I'm not sure he ever said the words "I'm sorry," but I could be wrong. I packed the guitar back in the box, grabbed my receipt and headed back out. Before I left, I got on the computer real quick and posted a little comment on Twitter. All it said was this:

Those sons of bitches at Guitar Center are really putting a damper on my future career.

Nothing drastic and I didn't think anything of it.

It was rush hour by the time I got back on the road and it took me between 45 minutes and an hour to get all the way back there. Went in, found the guy and had to wait another 10 minutes while he finished with a customer. He took my receipt and fixed it, gave me the correct guitar and I was on my way.

When I got back home, I opened the box and thankfully it was the right one. I tuned it and played it for a good half an hour or so before I had to leave. Grabbed the case, opened it and tried to put it inside, but it wouldn't fit. I stood there looking at my guitar laying on the top of case for about 30 seconds, just letting it sink in that they had fucked up twice and I was going to have to drive back out to Guitar Center for a third time.

By then, it was about 7:15 or so, and since GC closed at 8, I wasn't going to have time to go back that night. I called back and asked for the guy, again, and he eventually got on.

"Hey, so and so, this is Trevor. You sold me a guitar earlier that was the wrong color and I had to come back and get the right one?
"Oh yeah, what's up?"
"This guitar doesn't fit in the case you sold me."
Long pause.
"Dude. What happened?"
I didn't know quite what to say so I didn't say anything for a few seconds.
"I don't know man, you're the one that works there. I figured you'd know which case goes with the guitar you're selling."
"Yeah, sorry about that, you can bring it back out and we'll exchange it."

The other problem was that when he exchanged my guitar the first time, for some reason he took the case off the receipt and I asked him if that was going to be a problem because I couldn't get back out there for a few days. He said no, and I believed him.

After that, I checked my email and I had one from someone at Guitar Center. Apparently, someone had re-tweeted what I wrote and someone from GC saw it and got in touch with me. He asked what happened and I told him the story. I figured that would be the end of it, but the next day I had two e-mails and a voicemail from people that worked at Guitar Center, including the store manager. He apologized and said that he'd be more than happy to make it right and if I didn't want to drive all the way back out there, I could take it to a UPS store, send it back COD and he'd mail the correct case to my house. I said that wouldn't be necessary, but I didn't have another day off until the Monday after Thanksgiving, so that would be my earliest chance to return it. He said that was fine and that was that.

Yesterday, I finally made it back out to Guitar Center. The first employee that I encountered was the girl that checks things as you leave or checks the receipt as you come in. I told her what happened and why I was bringing the case back and her response was, of course, "there's not a case listed on this receipt."

I explained the situation and she sent me back to the guitar counter, provided I leave the case with her. I found someone to help me and told him that the guy had sold me the wrong case.
"What do you mean he sold you the wrong case."
"I mean, I got home and tried to put my guitar in the case and it didn't fit."
"How didn't it fit?"
"The guitar is too big."
"Oh, well you'll probably have to bring the guitar in so we can make sure which case you need."

At that point, I was livid. I don't like taking things out on people that don't deserve it, but Jesus Christ, that was the third time I'd been there for something as simple as a guitar and a case. It's fucking Guitar Center. All they do is sell gear. They should know which piece goes with what, for Christ's sake.

I asked him to just look it up on the computer so we could just finish and be done with it. When he went to look it up on the computer, he noticed the same thing, there was no case on my receipt. He passed me off to someone else, and it took him a few minutes but he figured out what had happened.
Then, he asked me if I wanted to buy the 3-year warranty for an extra $60.
"I bought that the first time. I should have."
"Nope, it's not on here. You want to get it now."
"No. I want my guitar case and I want to get the fuck out of here."
"Okay. I'm really sorry about all this."

That was the first time I'd heard a sincere apology from anyone other than the store manager and some random GC guy in California the entire time I'd dealt with them. He fixed everything, gave me my correct receipt and sent me on my way.

I got back up front, handed my receipt to the girl at the front and she looked it over. When I first came in, I had a case, but there was no case listed on my receipt. As I was leaving I had a new case but on my receipt there was a case and guitar. So, naturally, she didn't know what was going on and I had to wait at the front door for another 5 minutes while she figured out what happened.

I'm grateful for the two guys from Guitar Center that actually showed concern, but the rest of the employees treated me like I was an asshole for trying to fix what they fucked up in the first place.

The entire experience was fucking awful and I guess the moral of the story is, don't shop at Guitar Center anymore. I won't be.

But on the bright side, I've got a new acoustic that is really fun to play. I just wish I'd bought it somewhere else.

*UPDATE* I wrote an update about how this whole ordeal played out over here. Jeremy and Mike were awesome, helpful and did everything in their power to make it up to me only to see their employees tear it right back down. Still, I appreciate what those guys did.

PEOPLE SAY

As usual, I think I'm a bit late to the party with this band. I heard this song for the first time the other day and haven't been able to stop listening to it. I think the acoustic version is better (hence me posting that video) but I like the official version and video as well.

And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I wrote an article on Portugal. The Man for the Daily Utah Chronicle sometime in 2008-09. Unfortunately, since the Chrony's archive is so utterly fucked up I doubt I'll ever be able to find it.

When I enter my name into the search box, it brings up a whole bunch of articles from the past month that have absolutely nothing to do with me. It's really shitty and something they've known about for two years but never been able to fix or just don't care to. I'd like to search through some of those articles and see what else I forgot, because this band is definitely one of them. I'm sure of it.

THE RUNDOWN

I've been slacking over the past couple of weeks. Sorry about that. Not wanting the blog to go straight downhill, I've been posting things here and there, but they've mainly been lazy, quick posts or videos. Nothing wrong with all that, but those posts are kind of boring and usually the ones I skip over when I read other people's blogs. And I don't want you skipping over anything, let alone never coming back because I'm falling behind. That would be awful.

Besides, you're all dying to know what's been going on the past couple of weeks, right? Right. 

In short, my lack of posting has been due to an awful head cold that killed my two days off, then just as I got over that, I had to work for nearly two weeks straight (with the exception of Thanksgiving). And work usually drains me of any sort of creative energy (yes, I did just use the term 'creative energy') and I waste all my good small talk and quick jokes on undeserving customers who I hope will reward me with money for being clever. Sometimes it works.

That's not to say I didn't do anything during that time, I just didn't write about it. Here's a little rundown of my life the past couple of weeks, since you're dying to know.

Read on...

127 HOURS

James Franco is a strange guy. Sometimes I'll see him act and it's downright bad (SPIDER-MAN, for example), but then along comes something like 127 HOURS and he's fantastic from start to finish.

He plays Aron Ralston, a hiker that gets his hand stuck between a rock and a wall and eventually has to cut his own arm off to escape. It's a great story and Franco does an amazing job of holding the audiences attention for the full hour and a half, mostly all by himself. The actual scene of him breaking and cutting his arm off was pretty intense, mainly thanks to the sound effects, and I had to cover my eyes like a child a few times but overall it was a good movie. I joked that it was the same movie as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE in that in order to overcome a tricky situation the main character had to rely on things from his past for help. I was joking, but it's still kind of true.

I don't think Danny Boyle is the greatest filmmaker of all time like some people, but he does have a pretty amazing track record, and I'll always at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

BAD RELIGION/BOUNCING SOULS

I went to this show really excited to see the Bouncing Souls and indifferent about Bad Religion. I left the show stoked on Bad Religion (again) and really bummed about the Bouncing Souls.

They've fallen into the same trap that doomed so many punk/hardcore bands I really liked growing up. They spent so much time on the road playing shows and being punk rock that they don't know how to do anything else. They don't really like doing it, but there really aren't any other options for these guys. It's strictly a paycheck gig for them and it shows. They go through all the motions but there's no heart in it at all. Maybe they just had an off night when they were here and the rest of the shows were great, but somehow I don't think so. It's the same thing that happened to Slapshot and it came out in full in the documentary that was made about them. They all hate playing in the band, but they get paid lots of money to do it from time to time so they keep on going. It's sad, really. I'd rather never see them again and remember them fondly than see them do a half-assed version that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Bad Religion, on the other hand, was far better than I expected. These guys, to me, are the exact opposite of the Souls. Greg Graffin, the singer, is an author and college professor and Brett Gurewitz owns one of the (still) most successful indie labels putting out music right now (Epitaph). These guys have other things to keep them busy and only tour once in a while, aside from Warped Tour. And you can tell that it's just a huge release for them. It's fun for them to do and they don't look like they're bored to death on stage. I had planned on catching the first half of the set and then bailing, but they were too good. I had to see it through to the end, and I'm glad I did. Fantastic show by them.

MONSTERS

I'm torn on this movie. I'd been looking forward to it for quite a while and I thought everything about it was fantastic except for one thing - conflict. It just never got me feeling like any of the characters were in any sort of real danger. It looked amazing and the effects were better than some of the ones I've seen on big budget movies over the past couple of years (I hear the total budget of this movie was just under half a million dollars). I'd still recommend seeing it for the sheer fact that it's a hell of an accomplishment for an indie movie, but it did leave me a little cold. I just wanted something more from it.

THE WAR FOR LATE NIGHT

I've always been fascinated by the craft of stand up comedians and late night talk show hosts and the whole Tonight Show debacle from earlier this year had my attention the entire time. It was just one great thing after another. Bill Carter, a journalist for the New York Times, wrote an excellent book on the whole situation and I tore through it in a matter of a few days.

I've never liked Jay Leno and after reading The War For Late Night, I'm Dying Up Here (about the early LA days of comedy clubs like The Comedy Store and The Improv) and having started The Late Shift (about Leno and Lettermad battling for Johnny Carson's chair in the early 90s, also written by Carter) I like him even less. Sure, he's a hard worker I guess, but he doesn't really seem like a guy you'd want around. He'd tell the same bad set up, pause, raise your voice for the punchline jokes he makes in his monologues just so people like him. He desperately wants to be liked by everyone, but doesn't want to be friends with anyone. He doesn't want to be a bad guy but doesn't do anything that shows he has any real integrity.

The book doesn't let anyone off lightly and everyone gets their time to shine but it mostly focuses on how Conan got the short end of the stick. Not so much screwed, but just treated unfairly, Conan is the guy that comes across as the one with the most integrity and the biggest heart for the job.

It goes into detail about all the late night players and I like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (who Carter believes will be the future of network late night as soon as he decides he's through playing second fiddle to Stewart, which he shows no signs of doing right now) even more and have newfound respect for Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson.

I did lose a little respect for Letterman though, unfortunately. Always been a huge fan of his (he and Steve Martin are my two favorite comedians of all time, I think) but it just seems like he's gotten lazy in his old age. Every once in a while he gets fired up about something and he shows the brilliance we know he's capable of and becomes literally untouchable to anyone else in the game, but those moments are few and far between. And the fact that he tapes his friday show on Monday night so that he can fly home to Montana immediately after the Thursday taping left a bad taste in my mouth.

The saddest part about the whole book is that you get the feeling that Conan really wanted to push the boundaries of late night talk shows, but NBC didn't want to let him or didn't think he deserved to try. Not while they had Leno ready to go back to try and bring up the ratings he dragged down with his awful primetime show. Leno came across as apathetic about the whole thing and just wanted to keep doing what he's been doing, which is that he wants to tell jokes on TV every night. He doesn't actually care about anything after that opening monologue, but that's what he wants to do. And Letterman just doesn't want to admit defeat even though he enjoys it less and less as time goes on.

Great book if you're interested in any of these guys or about the situation in general. I'll even loan you my copy if you want.

THE HOLD STEADY/COMPANY OF THIEVES

Every time The Hold Steady has come through Salt Lake over the past two years, I've been out of town or working or just unable to go. It's been a real bummer. But they finally came through while I was here, in town and ready for them, albeit a little sick. They put on an amazing live show, too. No bells and whistles or light shows or anything like that, the band just played a solid, fun set for nearly an hour and a half (about 23 songs). It was in the small side of Bricks called Club Sound which was perfect for this show and The Hold Steady did not disappoint. Definitely worth the wait.

The first band of the night (can't remember what they were called) was some local group and they were absolutely terrible. I thought funk-rap died sometime in the mid-90s, but I guess I was wrong. The second band though, Company of Thieves, was downright fantastic. I'd never heard them before, or even heard OF them for that matter, but I loved every second of their set. The girl that sings for that band had so much energy that I couldn't take my eyes off the stage (didn't hurt that she was pretty easy on the eyes, either). Their stuff doesn't translate as well to the recording, but it's still good. One thing is for sure though, I will never, ever miss Company of Thieves live.