4 posts from October 2009

Get your free download of this most excellent boppy fun song.

Includes lines like "others try topping us, keep coming up short like Webster Papadopolis"

RIGHT HERE

You can get the "unwashed version" which I think includes Chase Utley's parade F-bomb.

Well, here it is, let's see:

 

Thanks for the free download and the great song!!

Also, thanks to Arbed for alerting me to this awesomeness from someecards:

 

Okay, it's anti-cat but it's still funny.  I liked the part where he was talking about what would happen if there were seeing-eye-cats.

 

I know, "Cats for Clunkers" doesn't really make sense for this, but don't give me grief about it, I didn't make it up.

I know it's only October, but everytime that dreaded year end listmaking comes up I draw a blank.  Every year WXPN asks you to send them their list and then have a drawing for something, usually a bunch of the top CDs, maybe an iPod. 

So here are MY FAVORITE (that means no arguing that I'm wrong, because I'm right) of 2009 so far.  Subject to change depending on if anything I like better comes out in the next 2.5 months, or if I get into something I hadn't heard that came out before, of course.

They aren't going to be in order excpet the ones I like best and listened to the most will be at the top, lesser listened to toward the bottom.  The top 2 are my runaway favorites of the year.

Illinois--The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe

 

Mexican Institute of Sound--Soy Sauce

Kinky--Barracuda

Empire of the Sun--Walking on a Dream

 

Art Brut--Art Brut vs. Satan

 

Gomez--A New Tide

 

Sondre Lerche--Heartbeat Radio

 

Andrew Bird--Noble Beast

 

The Church--Untitled #23

 

Okay, that's 9.  I scrolled back through my music and couldn't find much else.  I hate the top 10 of the year because I rarely find albums the year they come out unless it's an artist I already know and love.  And sometimes I just put them on the list because even though I don't think it's their best effort (see Kings of Leon Only by the Night and Ryan Adams Cardinology...) I put them on the list because I know it's still better than half the shit out there.  Sometimes I just put stuff on the list because I've heard a few songs off the album.  Anyway, the only reason I'm doing this is so I have it for later and also because I am procrastinating doing housework. 

For some reason when I couldn't sleep last night I thought of this movie and for some reason too, I started writing a review at about 3 a.m.

Before there was Gil Grissom, there was Richard Chance, William Petersen's character in To Live and Die in L.A..--the bowlegged badass bungee jumping cop who is out to get the guy who killed his partner:  Rick Masters, the flare-nostrilled artist who makes most of his money by, well, making it, the counterfeiting way, since he prefers to burn most of his paintings before he can sell any.

To Live and Die in L.A., to me, is the ultimate 80s movie (not counting John Hughes flicks).  It has the flash and glam and new wave California decadence of the 1980s, countered with the gritty reality of cop life and the seedier side of LA.  Throw in an awesome, nailbiter, edge-of-your-seat, wrong-way-on-the-highway car chase and a killer Wang Chung soundtrack* and you've got yourself one hell of a movie.  It's got a bit of the cheese factor, but it was the 80s, after all.  That's part of its attraction, its charm, if you will.

William Petersen is sexy.  Willem Dafoe is nasty sexy.  Look for a sexy lesbian played by Jane Leeves (yes, Daphne Moon of Frasier), and John Turturro as a crafty convict.  John Pankow (of Mad About You) plays his new partner, John Vukovich, a by-the-book cop who is dragged to the naughty side by Chance.

*Scoff not at the Wang Chung soundtrack.  This is not your "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight" Wang Chung.  They captured the time and mood of this film.  It's sultry, and it is 80s.

A little trivia for the kiddies---this movie, I believe, introduced bungee jumping to American audiences.  What may seem common or even passe now was almost unknown in 1985.  Also, we had to rent this movie in a store, on videotape, and we didn't have cell phones, internet or iPods.  We drank water from the tap, not from plastic bottles!