Janine Conway filmed,edited and produced this short documentary on the beloved Charm City Art Space – a well known punk/hardcore/indie/whatever music and arts venue in Baltimore, MD.

It’s neat to hear from the venue organizers and attendees on why this venue has been/is still a really important space in Baltimore for musicians and artists.  It’s cool that she was able to conduct the interviews before the venue moved into the new Charm City Art Space building – which is actually right next door to the old space.

The case is basically a guy, while in a drunken stupor, inadvertently kills a woman’s cat by throwing a television at a wall and crushing the little beast.

Be sure to watch the last minute because it rules:

“No, We’re tough, we hate those people”/”They’re straight, we hate them”/”You just use people and you move on”/”We only smash stuff outsiddde.”

Tough. As. Nails.

Jennifer Love Heweit’s new self-help romance book, The Day I Shot Cupid, includes a chapter discussing how Vajazzling helped her get through a tough break up – I bet that’s going to sell well.  I’m sure her publishers were thrilled when she told George Lopez that her vagina looks like a disco ball.

Maybe the next time I’m feeling blue I should bedazzle my ballsack with some led lights or something to boost my self-esteem.

+  The new Balance and Composure song Kaleidoscope is soo fucking good.  Listen to it HERE.  They’re releasing a split with Tigers Jaw in May which features 4 new songs from both bands.  I’m really looking forward to that.

+ 4Chan founder interviewed at the TED conference.  Nothing really profound happens in the interview but it is interesting to learn that he started the site at 15 and he doesn’t look as nerdy as you would think the founder of 4 chan would look.

+ This is pretty amazing.  The Bloom Box is a small wireless device that can generate power without being connected to the grid.

Depressing Things

+ Girl sings a cover of Tik Tok by Kesha on youtube and gets flamed horribly.  People on the internet are pricks.  StreetBoners has some funny stuff to say about it.

It’s more abuse than anyone in human history has taken. She’s like an experimental crash-test dummy for a bleeding-edge form of online punishment: rapid-fire, anonymous, continual, explicit, targeted, specific. It’s life-changing, serial-killer-making EGO DESTRUCTION.

Even the worst American Idols are not exposed to this degree of punishment. Their millions of mocking viewers can only laugh in their livings rooms — they can’t directly lash out…

Observations:
A) WHAT the fuck is wrong with her parents that they could expose her to this? This girl is not just overweight, she’s also got some kind of developmental issue. WHERE the fuck are her parents? The trailer can’t be that big.

B) WHAT the fuck is wrong with humanity? It’s so great to see how people REALLY act when they have anonymity. It’s like staring into a stranger’s eyes from a subway platform once the subway doors have closed — you each know the other guy can’t physically get to you, so all bets are off.

C) Every ten comments or so, someone surfaces who can’t bear the raw and terrible honesty of nature. They tell her how beautiful she is, and how if she keeps at it, she can make all her dreams come true. These people are worse than the haters; by giving her these droplets of hope, they are keeping her addicted to the punishment channel like a smack addict crawling through a burnt-out poppy field.

What a clusterfuck.

+ If you’re worried about the economy read this article and figure out that the future is looking bleaker than you had imagined.

Last spring, an organization called JobNob began holding networking happy hours to try to match college graduates with start-up companies looking primarily for unpaid labor. Julie Greenberg, a co-founder of JobNob, says that at the first event, on May 7, she expected perhaps 30 people, but 300 showed up. New graduates didn’t have much of a chance; most of the people there had several years of work experience—quite a lot were 30-somethings—and some had more than one degree. JobNob has since held events for alumni of Stanford, Berkeley, and Harvard; all have been well attended (at the Harvard event, Greenberg tried to restrict attendance to 75, but about 100 people managed to get in), and all have been dominated by people with significant work experience.When experienced workers holding prestigious degrees are taking unpaid internships, not much is left (for everyone else.)

Disregard my initial criticism of this album because I haven’t taken the time to sit down and give it a good in-depth listen (which is one of my old man gripes below).

I should be more excited about Have One on Me considering how incredible Joanna Newsom’s last album Ys was but I can not get excited about a TRIPLE album release.

I should be happy that she’s releasing so much new music but I feel like a triple album release ruins the enjoyment for me because it makes the album into this daunting musical opus that will take months to truly comprehend and enjoy – and I’m not sure I want to invest that much of my time into this.

I’m also bummed because Van Dyke Parks, the man responsible for the orchestral arrangements on Ys, is no where to be found on this album.

Oh, and the vinyl looks beautiful (aside from that text).

Download Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me

Buy the Vinyl from Drag City

This is a continuation of Kris’ “favorite movies of 2009″ list.  Part 1 can be found HERE.  Part 2 can be found HERE.

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CASH BACK

I randomly found this movie searching through the Netflix database and ended up really enjoying it. An art student, Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) is plagued with insomnia after a break-up and decides to devote is extra time towards working the late shift at a supermarket. He some how finds a way to be inspired in an otherwise uninspiring job by pretending he has the ability to freeze time whenever he wants and use the frozen people around him for his own benefit. Almost always he targets young women and uses them as subjects in his drawings. I guess the creep factor comes in with the fact that he undresses the helpless women in order to draw them and study the human form.

Despite this, the film treats the nudity of the female subjects delicately and uses it much as an artist would in a painting or drawing. Nudity is not used to be gratuitous or gain the film popularity, but in order to give an inside into the mind of an artist obsessed with portraying reality in his work. Fortunately, this film was produced in Europe where censorship laws are a lot more lenient than here in the United States.

The setting of a supermarket is really interesting when thinking of the themes of art, the human form and the female nude presented in the movie. The blinding white florescent lights used in supermarkets cast overtop the models giving the artist a complete, almost pure view originally meant for the rows upon rows of product. The women almost themselves become products and the female form is almost obviously a desire of Ben and many male artists throughout the history of art. Interestingly enough he never freezes a male subject for his drawings.

I’m not exactly sure how they shot the scenes where the actors were frozen but I’m guessing that it took a lot of takes and holding of breaths.

____________________

DO THE RIGHT THING

Spike Lee has always been a director that I’ve looked up to. He was probably one of the first notable black directors in Hollywood and definitely a huge role model to a lot of the kids who grew up in the neighborhoods that he presented in his earlier films. I didn’t grow up in such a neighborhood, but always went up to New Jersey to visit with my mom’s family and where she grew up in the inner city. I am a straight up suburban kid, but those mandatory family visits definitely gave me an in on city life.

Lee does films his own way and uses his experiences to portray the stories of inner city life that wasn’t being shown in the 80’s. His use of little known and first time actors in his films gave them an edge that is impossible to produce with any well trained cast. In addition, most of his younger cast went on to become big name stars: Martin Lawrence, John Turturro, Rosie Perez to name a few.

Do the Right Thing is simply a day in the life of  Mookie (played by Lee) a pizza delivery boy in Brooklyn along with a variety of other characters in his neighborhood. The film touches on a lot of issues found present in cities to this day, most namely racial tensions. Even though the people in the neighbor eat at the shop Mookie works at (which is owned and operated by an Italian-American and his sons), they still see themselves separate from them and vice versa.

The lessons that can be learned from this still are still pertaining to present day, definitely a must see for anyone living in an urban community.

____________________

FOOD INC.

Anyone who eats food needs to watch this film.  We put so many things in our body each day without really wondering where it came from or the process that it went through in order to become what we are eating. There are so many things that are kept from us about the things that we are eating and how it effects the way that we function daily. Just now are we starting to chip away at the huge problem of child obesity which runs rabid throughout our society.

The film centers around the farming industry and though it does feature some Peta-esque footage of deformed animals, it really isn’t pro-vegetarian. What I thought was great was the emphasis on an all natural/organic farmer who processes meat and treats his animals ethically and to the best of his abilities.

I think you have to take most documentaries which are on any subject lightly and with a grain of salt. Obviously the people who are documenting whatever you are watching are trying to open you up to the subject and hopefully change your mind. The best thing to do (in my opinion) is to watch it with an open mind, digest all of the facts, and then use the information that you learned as a stepping stone towards more education on the subject. DON’T STOP WITH ONE FILM. On film is unable to give you all the information, stories, and opinions on a topic that have ever been said, published, or thought. Do your own investigation, talk to the people around you and then form your conclusions.

Or not, its up to you. Either way this film will open you up to a few things you probably didn’t know about the food you eat every day.

____________________

I LOVE YOU MAN

This was one of the only romantic comedies that I have watched and will say with pride that I enjoyed. Paul Rudd plays Peter, a guy who’s about to get married and realizes that he has no close guy friends because he’s always been the totally devoted boyfriend. In comes Sydney (Jason Segel) , dedicated batchelor for life and all around nut case, who comes into Peter’s life and reminds him how to be a dude and do dude things.

The best part of this movie had to be the commentary between Rudd, Segel, and director John Hamburg. Essentially they just make more jokes about each scene and give you more information about how many takes certain shots took to get because everyone was laughing or when natural laughs were caught on film and used in the final film. The best part has to be Segel’s constant apologies to the viewers that he hasn’t appeared in the film until it’s almost half over.

This movie had me laughing til I was in tears. You’ve probably already seen it but you probably didn’t listen to the commentary, so you should do that.

I really like the loose caricature styling of these illustrations from German artist wischnik.  If think this style of illustration would transfer really well to tattoo design.

+  A new way to treat cancer without hurting surrounding tissue:  shake the cells to death.

+  25 ways to overcome a creative block.  Interesting read.  I like the guy who includes a dinner recipe.

+  Take your friends money using your iphone and their credit card.

+  Benn Ray, from Mobtown Shank, offers you a list of his favorite comics of 2009.

+  Awesome idea.  Curtain made from film slides.

+  Sarah Silverman pisses off nerds at the TED conference by doing her usual insulting comic routine.

Chalk Talk is an infectiously happy three piece punk band from Connecticut/Massachusetts.

While watching them play through their set in a VFW hall in Massachusetts a few weeks back I couldn’t help but think that they are the embodiment of what I envision an early Blink 182 show being like..  They heckled the crowed, yelled a bunch of crude words, made jokes, cobbled together a set list in between songs and were beaming with excitement and energy the whole time.  It was great.  It has been a long time since I’ve been to a show where every person in the crowd was singing along and jumping up and down for the majority of a set.

They just released a split cassette with Black Churches (someone upload this, please?) and I believe they’re in the process of writing a full length and releasing a split with Algernon Cadwallader.

They also do that falsetto harmonizing thing that early Weezer liked to do which I’m a big fan of.

Download:

Chalk Talk – Killing Spree

Watch:

Also, I’m pretty sure TsimFuckis (otherwise known as alien boy) is in the second video.