Final episode!

http://blip.tv/file/816904

Oh deary me.

This one was… a learning experience.

More to come.

With Local Opener: How to Become a Rockstar

In absence of me actually posting things like a good little blogger, check out this video-blog thingie my friend Joe and I are working on for a class. Episodes 2 and 3 are also in the works. Let us know what you think so that we can use the lessons from this one to make the next ones better.

With Local Opener: Murphy’s Law

The nickname “Hotlanta” is well deserved, because tonight, I felt like we were performing in the sixth circle of hell. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sweaty after a show, and I’ve had some pretty intense performances.

Speaking of intense performances, I hurt myself today.

If you’ve seen me perform with Honeycreeper, you probably know that during the chorus of “In The End” I sometime throw my fist into the air. The venue tonight had low hanging rafters and vents. The two didn’t agree. It was neat though, because I didn’t even know that I had that totally gnarly cut until way after we finished. I figured I had just looked like a jackass who had punched the ceiling.

Speaking of jackasses, I don’t know what the hell is up with the people that came to the show tonight, but I think they are among the sketchiest people I have ever encountered. While sitting outside, waiting for the show to wrap up, a group of kids seemed to produce from out of nowhere a full set of barbershop equipment and started shaving each others heads, beards, and body hair.

I just really have no idea. I’d also like to point out the doorman to the club in this photo. He’s the tall, shaven-headed, beer-bellied, scene kid wearing skin tight pants and flip flops.

Tonight’s been an experience.

From the moment we entered the venue, this guy acted like a dick.

“Ok, you’re gonna backline your stuff behind the first band. Put your drums in the corner, your bass cab is gonna here, the guitar cab goes here. We’re gonna side-wash both of them, we don’t back wash here. If I tell you to turn down during line check, I’ll give you a pecentage to turn down and you need to just do it, you’ll be able to hear yourself just fine, trust me. Oh, and I’m Paul, the owner, stage manager, and sound guy.”

“Um. Hi.”

This guy looked like he’d be perfectly in place at a Metallica concert in the 90s, except that he would have been about 30 years older than everyone else there. I guessed that his band probably never made it and he settled for owning a rock club.

He dictated a somewhat out of sight place for us to set up our merch, claiming that, from experience, it always ended up being the best place to put it. He wouldn’t let Mandy take out out her saxaphones to either set them up or warm up before we were scheduled to go on and also made her put her Galloway Elementary School water bottle back on the bus because no “uncontrolled” beverages were allowed into bars in Iowa.

We just kinda shrugged it off, taking him to be a normal over-zealous, control freak bar owner and finished bringing in our equipment. Things just went downhill from there.

The house PA system wasn’t anything amazing, but seemed decently set up and maintained. The vocal and guitar mics had been already wired and on stands and the drum kit mics were lying, nicely arranged, on the drum riser by the time we arrived. In fact, everything seemed like it was pretty much ready to go from the moment we set foot inside. I took this as a good sign. I shouldn’t have.

Stanwood Charlie, who we’d been sharing most of our tour shows with, arrived, set up and began their line check. At one point, Jared, the lead singer, bumped his mic stand with his bass guitar as he turned around, moving it maybe a couple inches. The owner’s voice was instantly on the talk-back.

“You’re gonna have to reset that back to where it was.”

What the hell was with this guy? And why did it sound like all he was doing was turning up the volume on each channel and not adjusting EQ or compression on anything? I wandered over to the Front of House booth and discovered some cheap EQs, compressors, automatic feedback suppressors, and that the channels on the soundboard were permanently labeled with what they were supposed to be. Interesting.

Stanwood Charlie played their set and took their gear off pretty quickly and we started setting up. I have a fairly large pedal board and change effects fairly often during shows, so I set up my mic stand off to the side, like so, and position the mic so it stands right in front my face when I’m centered on the board, allowing me to sing and hit effects at the same time. I grabbed the mic stand and began adjusting but didn’t get too far.

“No, no, no, put that right back where it was,” Paul barked as he walked over. “That needs to stay exactly where it was.”

“I can’t, I need to put my pedal board there, I have to be able to sing to change effects at the same time.”

“Put it off to the side,” he commanded, “I have this set up very specifically for feedback. The mic needs to remain right there.”

“Um. Well, I need to have the pedals right in front of me when I’m doing vocals, I can’t put them off to the side. Look, the mic is going to remain in the same place, only the stand is gonna move.”

“The mic needs to be right there, bent back at exactly this angle like this.” He said angrily, and demonstrated.

“Ok, I understand, that’s pretty much what I was going to do, anyway. I’m a sound guy too, I get what you’re doing.” He seemed to accept this and walked away to mic the drums still grumbling something about how the mic needs to be set up. I grabbed my pedal board and set to work wiring things up. I didn’t get to far before I overheard Mandy’s somewhat upset voice at the tail end of a conversation.

“… No, I refuse, purely for germ reasons. If I can’t use my own mic, we’re just not gonna play.” Uh oh.

A while back, Mandy and I bought our own vocal mics, an Audix OM5 and OM7 respectively, because we didn’t want to worry about having to put our mouths on the same club mics that god-only-knows-who used the night before and also because they sound much better than the SM58s that most venues have. Paul was apparently refusing to let Mandy swap in her mic. I walked over and asked him what was up.

“I have this entire place set up very carefully for feedback and no one’s using any equipment other than mine. it’s my place, my rules, my equipment. I don’t argue with bands about this stuff.” Oh god, it was all starting to make sense.

“Well, this mic is significantly tighter than the 58s you have set up and is guaranteed to be less feedback-y. We got it because it also fits her voice alot better and she’s also gotten sick a few times from club microphones. I understand your concern, but she’s really serious about this, and we’d really appreciate if you could be a bit lenient about this. I promise it’s not gonna cause a problem for you. And, I mean, normally, we’d be having the same argument about my mic, except that I left it behind at a show a few nights ago.”

“This is non-negotiable. This is a benefit, I’m donating my club, my time, and my equipment for all this. I’m the one who’s giving the most here. You’re using my mics, that’s final.” Apparently, the fact that we were playing this show for free didn’t earn us the right to use our own equipment as his sacrifice was so much grander, despite the fact that the sparse, bored looking crowd seemed significantly more interested in buying drinks and pool table usage from Paul than our merch.

“We’re already starting an hour and a half later than this was supposed to and then I’ve got a normal show going on after this one,” he added. I guess he never received our multiple e-mails and calls about what time load in was and simply assumed that saying the show would start at noon without telling us when we were going to play would result in us showing up at 10AM, regardless of our late show the night before in a town two hours away.

Dan called Paul’s attention to try his hand but at this point it was becoming clear that there was no hope for this situation. Paul had something to prove, and after quickly taking stock of the facts, we realized that we really had nothing to gain from playing. We grabbed our equipment and loaded up the bus.

From talking to the other bands outside, I gathered that this club essentially had the same bands play there all the time, without a hint of variety. Paul had apparently created some sort of template for how shows are supposed to go and then tried to shove every band he had there into it. Since Honeycreeper doesn’t do very well with being forced into someone else’s idea of anything, the result shouldn’t have been very surprising. Something tells me that Paul has never had an act that’s even close to being big play at his venue.

In the bus, Dan relayed a conversation he had overheard from one of the other bands while he was packing up merch.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, I think they’re not gonna play.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know, apparently he’s hassling them or giving them a hard time or something.”

“So they’re just not gonna play?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

A pause. “Cool.”

Driving between shows is an interesting experience, especially for the longer hauls. Whoever is driving gets to choose the music, so what comes over the speakers ends up being a total grab bag.

Out of everyone in the band, I think I actually end up having the most mainstream music tastes, which is probably somewhat surprising to anyone who knows me. Mandy busts out a seemingly non-stop stream of 80s and early 90s rap and pop (epitomized by her “Old Skool Jamz” mix which features the likes of “Baby Got Back”, “Bald Headed Hos”, “Mama Said Knock You Out”, “The Humpty Dance”, and “Shoop”), with the occasional Prince or Rancid thrown in. Sean’s iPod packs an eclectic mix of genres, yielding Ludacris, DMX, Mastadon, Queens of the Stone Age, Rilo Kiley, The Beatles, Johnny Cash , and Radiohead. Dan’s rather copious collection tends to favor lo-fi punk, rock, and metal, and with bits of whatever the kids are listening to nowadays, taking the mix from Social Distortion and Bad Religion to Suicidal Tendencies to Helmet to Mr. Bungle to the Dropkick Murphies to Cobra Starship to Fall Out Boy to Amy Winehouse to Regina Spektor.

All this usually results in one, maybe two people rocking out and the rest of us trying desperately to find something to distract ourselves or fall asleep. This is actually quite a bit more difficult that it seems because the bus doesn’t have air conditioning, so we have to open most of the windows to let in air. Unfortunately, this also lets in a ton of noise, forcing whoever’s driving to crank the stereo in order to hear whatever they’re currently torturing the others with.

I’ve dealt with this two ways. The first is the combination of the bus A.C. converter, my Senheisser HD280 Pros, my laptop, and several downloaded seasons of Entourage and House, M.D. I have trouble following shows because I don’t watch much TV and certainly don’t do it regularly (I went all of last year without cable in my room), so I tend to marathon when I find something good. A six hour bus ride is very conducive environment to following drawn out story lines.

The second is the discovery of the single most important thing you can possibly bring with you on tour: earplugs. My mom bought me a pack of Mack’s Pillow Soft earplugs on a whim because they were advertised as “snore proof” and I put them in my bag mainly to humor her. I’ve found them invaluable. While the plugs definitely don’t reach the claimed 22db noise reduction, they fit nicely into my ears and are pretty comfortable to sleep with, unlike my Hearos, and block high frequencies quite competently, removing most open-window bus noise and reducing other non-deafening sounds to a muted hum. They also really are essentially snore proof. The other members of my band are somewhat to inclined to saw wood during sleep, and I am floored by how well these earplugs block it out. Between them and my inflatable Aerobed, sleeping on the floor is hardly a letdown.

Finally, you can see some neat stuff while driving. This trucker had a hand puppet that he stuck at passing traffic. He might be my favorite person ever.

We also played tag with an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.

I wish I had managed to get a picture of one of the road signs for the town of Hope, Iowa because they were literally the word Hope with an arrow. Whoever was in change of that one clearly had an artistic spirit.

And yes, Guitar Hero 2 wasn’t kidding. It really does take a long time to drive the van through Iowa.

We didn’t get a chance to eat until right before our show, so we stopped into a nearby Subway.

“Do you know the sign alphabet?” Sean asked me.

“Not really.”

“Ok, well, this is the sign for M… U…” he stopped saying the letters out loud after that, but his fingers spelled out M-U-L-L-E-T, and then pointed to what turned out to be a woman (it wasn’t obvious) in line ahead of us. I grabbed this photo with my phone to share the wonders we found with you all.

Also note the completely stoned cashier. Also note the kid next to her in the wife-beater and dark shorts. He’s hers. One of hers anyway, there were 8 of them. All dressed uniformly in a wife-beater and dark shorts. Including the girl, who old enough to be wearing a bra, but definitely wasn’t, and as a result was starting to escape the wife-beater’s loose confines.

Way to be, Madison, Wisconsin. Way to be.

Driving to the venue, we were met with immediate disappointment as we discovered that Zap’s, an apparently amazing restaurant that Dan had found when the band played the same venue last year, had closed down. As such, we were left without an easy place to get food after the show. After packing our gear into the bus, Dan told us that one of the bar patrons he had spoken to suggested a 24 hour diner called Jaunita’s. Lacking any clearly better options and ideas, we sallied forth.

After eventually finding the place, we quickly reconsidered whether we actually wanted to eat there, as to call it shoddy would be a rather strong understatement. Still, we figured it couldn’t be that bad if someone had actually suggested it, unless that person was some sort of malicious, passive aggressive troublemaker, giving hapless traveler bad dining advice in hopes of possibly causing mild discomfort and/or annoyance. Upon entering, we sat down at a table by the jukebox and a woman came over to take our orders. She was an old, somewhat larger woman with a face like freshly kneaded pizza dough. Somewhat unfortunately, my attention was immediately drawn to the fact that her rather ample chest was definitely not confined by a bra, and her not-quite-loose t-shirt didn’t leave much to imagination, except perhaps as to how she had been exposed to cold temperatures recently. Dan began to order.

“I’ll have the-.” Dan started.

“Excuse me?” the woman interrupted. We looked at her in mild confusion. “There’s a lady at the table,” she said, indicating Mandy.

“Where?” asked Mandy looking around. The woman laughed.

“Well, a female at least. Oh, if you’re going to be like that, you might like having a look at this,” she stated with a smile, drawing attention with her hands to what at first glance looks like a pendant hanging around her neck.

The pendant was in fact a miniature phallus, complete with testicles, made of what appeared to be chain links. The woman grinned and pulled on a small chain hanging down from the bulk of the pendant. The chain contracted the links, erecting the penis triumphantly.

“I always keep a man with me.”

Dan and Sean burst out laughing as Mandy gawked with mouth open. Dan commented on how he though the that woman had just blown Mandy’s mind with the contraption. I smiled politely and ordered a grilled chicken sandwich.

That’s it, I officially hate programming.

At this point, reading news about Sony is just like hearing those weird snippet of gossip about that kid you kinda knew in high school who’s now reportedly train hopping around the country reading beatnik poetry. Should I even be surprised that they actually sacrificed a goat for God of War 2? Probably not, but I still can’t help but at least wonder how they ever thought this was a good idea. I like topless chicks dipping grapes into my mouth and eating offal out of a freshly slaughtered goat’s stomach as much as the next guy, but come on.

Oh. My. God.

I can’t help but scream “DUH!” every time I stumble upon an article like this. I really don’t understand how anyone can possibly think that having a few guest speakers talking to kids about the benefits of not having sex until marriage is somehow going to win out over human nature. Most kids hit 16 and want to fuck. Most want to before that, actually, but have either the sense or the advice to at least wait a bit because knowing the mechanics of sex doesn’t mean understanding it.

Abstinence only sex-ed is something akin to sending a football team into a game only knowing one play. It doesn’t allow kids to make a choice about sex since it doesn’t even let them know there are options. As a result, when they’re all of a sudden hit by incredibly powerful desires and emotions, they’re left without the means to deal with them. Unless they conducted their own research (which some will, thankfully, but that can’t be said to be the vast majority), when these kids actually begin having sex (which I will bet will be before marriage, thought I don’t have the statistics to back it up) they won’t know how to properly protect themselves and their partner. Thus, ironically, abstinence only sex-ed actually perpetuates the very things it’s trying to stop: unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs. The people that I know that have actually stayed abstinent (and there’s not alot of them, let me tell you) have done so because they had a complete picture of what options were available and made and educated decision about what they felt was best for them.

There is no way that a two week course based on semi-religious ideals in middle school is ever going to hold on kids that are battling not only their hormones, but the complete sensory onslaught of sex in our culture. But despite that, the powers that be and the moral high grounds still decide to make decisions on and perpetuate the idea that sex is not a normal, healthy thing to be enjoyed by everyone, but some sort of dirty, shameful deed meant to be kept private if ever committed.

Frankly, I just think those people need to get laid more.

Creationists have finally found undeniable proof that they’re correct in the creation vs. evolution argument: Skippy. Oi. (via BoingBoing)

I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why it is that, with the exception of Robert Rodriguez, the people chosen to direct movies based on comic books always decide that they can do a better job telling the story than the people who created it, especially when those people are the likes of Frank Miller.

So, 300. Not like anyone’s holding their breathe in anticipation for my thoughts on the matter, but I was disappointed. There it is.

With that being said, I didn’t hate it. At least it wasn’t a total travesty a la poor Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Whereas those directors decided to go the route of complete bastardization, at least Zack Snyder had the good sense to try to stick the original. It’s just when he strayed that he went completely wrong. His additions and changes to the story felt tacked on, unfitting, and, the worst, compromising of the characters. I absolutely can’t stand when, in transition between media, characters or characterizations are changed, which is the cause of my disdain towards V and LXG. Thankfully, such changes were not nearly as prevalent in 300.

And seriously, they only spend about 10 minutes actually fighting in the narrow canyon that the entire strategy was based on. Come on.

I won’t go into to many specifics, so no spoiler alert. If you really want me to, ask me.

I felt that almost all of the performances were very strong, though a couple moments left me wondering if the actors had read the comic. The visuals of the movie are absolutely stunning, and my favorite part of the whole thing. They also do an amazing job of making the movie feel like the subjective re-telling of a story (and history) that it is. If there’s one good thing to be said about Zack Snyder, it’s that he’s got good eyes.
My problem seems to be that I usually experience and fall in love with the original work before I experience the derivative and always feel let down because the latter never seems to capture what I loved about the former. Is it wrong to expect a faithful movie adaptation of what is essentially a storyboard for shooting a movie in the first place? Or, if changes must be made, then to at least try to make them so that the final product stays true to the original?

I think that Sin City is the best comic book adaptation I’ve ever seen, probably because it’s true to the comic scene for scene, line for line, with minor cuts. I understand not every movie can do that (though I feel that you certainly can with Frank Miller’s work, which is why I’m so surprised that 300 didn’t receive the same treatment). Am I really the only person that thinks the best part of comic book movies are when they do (correctly) what was in the comic? I think my feelings are a bit heightened when the subject is a graphic novel, which is much more narrowly contained than an epic series like Spiderman or X-Men. I was unhappy with Spiderman’s organic web shooters and the replacement of toughy southern belle Rogue with whimpering ingenue Rogue, but I didn’t think they wrecked the movies. Whereas, when V declared his love for Evvy, I wanted to break something.

Back to the topic at hand, I guess 300 still sorta feels like the original. I didn’t like that the story kept moving away from the Spartan soldiers. The comic made you feel the grind of battle, which I felt was broken by the constant shifts back to Sparta. I felt the storyline in Sparta was completely unnecessary. I just really, really think that it would’ve been a better movie if it had been closer to the comic, along the lines of Sin City. Yes, 300 isn’t a very long comic, but the additions made the movie two hours in length. If the movie had been a completely awesome hour and twenty minutes, I don’t think anyone would have complained.

Not that anyone other than me is complaining now. From the reviews I’ve seen, everyone’s going to love this movie just like they loved V for Vendetta. I guess what really bothers me is that this kind of thing is going to get approval and yield more just like it, while getting a poor reception would probably end up making better movies in the future. The production teams clearly decide that they’re not catering to the people that know the original work, since it seems that’s not necessary to make the movie a success. Maybe that’s the problem though. I mean, wasn’t the original good enough for you to decide to make a movie out of it in the first place? I guess I really shouldn’t expect to see anything different from anyone that’s not as much of a renegade or as in-tune with audience of the original works as Robert Rodriguez. If V for Vendetta had stayed true to its roots, it would probably have been a sleeper hit rather than the Spring/Summer Blockbuster that it was. I guess the fact that it probably would’ve been a better movie doesn’t matter.
Oh well. At least I won’t be completely unable to watch this again, the way I was with V.

Holy crap. This might very well be the coolest thing I’ve seen this month.

Laser guided graffiti system.

Just… watch the video. There’s nothing I can say to describe how amazing this is.