Moving On (Tumblr)

Over this, moving on to Tumblr: http://anonybro.tumblr.com/

(Local) Bands to Watch: My First Earthquake

I've developed a major band crush on My First Earthquake, and it's not just because lead singer Rebecca Bortman is mad cute. MFE is a synth-pop, sometimes slightly punkish band that could most easily be compared to New Young Pony Club or the Ting Tings with a hint of
Be Your Own Pet. Or, as they put it on the band's myspace; "Debbie Harry doing Devo in the back of a Dodge Dart." (UHHHH, SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!) From their website: "Our lyrics might be the last place you'd expect to find sage advice about news anchors, zombies, soup, sprinkler systems, and cross-dressing boyfriends. ...[On their name:] Rebecca's first earthquake happened at our first rehearsal. The name stuck — we like the mix of geological, sexual repression, and Fisher Price allusions. We've been breaking hearts and repairing guitars ever since, mostly around San Francisco." Here's a little taster of MFE goodness:

Cool in the Cool Way (Downstairs LP)
About: Hip nerdom
Sounds Like: The single from their first full length Downstairs.

Meat Pies (Downstairs LP, pre-release version)
About: Going Helena Bonham Carter on a dude, a la Sweeny Todd.
Sounds Like: Tings Tings & New Young Pony Club meet Tim Burton.

Teleprompt (Tremors EP)
About: Newscasters in love
Sounds Like: The Blow

Outta the Band (Downstairs LP, pre-release version)
About: Girls in all guy bands
Sounds Like: Be Your Own Pet, Le Tigre, irony and feminism.

Other than a few residual checks from iPod commercials, the only thing that separates MFE from New Young Pony Club and the Ting Tings are lyrics. MFE kicks the shit outta them on paper.
Oh, and they're SF local and unsigned; I'M IN LOVE.
But I plan on checking them out at the Knockout on July 15th before I get too caught up making wedding plans. Hopefully they're as good as they seem to have been in this vid from an Oakland show about a year ago.

The Revolution Will Be Twitterized

Despite a ban on foreign media, and attempts to completely shut down internet and cell phone services (text messages included), the posts are coming in at nearly 35-50 tweets per minute with the tag #iranelection, and nearly every tenth of those tweets screams through the interwebz that the Iranian Army has been deployed and is en route to confront pro-Moussavi protesters in Tehran.

From the NY Times:

The crackdown on communications began on election day, when text-messaging services were shut down in what opposition supporters said was an attempt to block one of their most important organizing tools. Over the weekend, cellphone transmissions and access to Facebook and some other Web sites were also blocked.

Iranians continued to report on Monday that they could not send text messages.

...

Many Twitter users have been sharing ways to evade government snooping, such as programming their Web browsers to contact a proxy — or an Internet server that relays their connection through another country.

Austin Heap, a 25-year-old information technology consultant in San Francisco, is running his own private proxies to help Iranians, and is advertising them on Twitter. He said on Monday that his servers were providing the Internet connections for about 750 Iranians at any one moment.

Even as I type this I'm trying to keep up with the hundreds and hundreds of new posts coming in by the minute now. It's hard to tell what's bullshit and what's not. Particularly dramatic highlights include:

"WARNING: If you can, take down satellite dish. Besij raiding houses with satellite."

"URGENT SHARE confirmed: don't let them take injured ppl to the hospital by ambulance. they'll be taken to Sepah hospital!"

"NEWS: those killed in Tehran Uni been buried by gov. w/out families knowledge"

"Canadian journalist in Iran detained, beaten, & taken to Int. Ministry for questioning http://bit.ly/JaAYR "

"call from [redacted] saying plainclothes going door2door now looking for satellite dsh "

BoingBoing has also posted a 'CyberWar Guide for Iran Elections' giving instructions on how to use proxies to bypass the State media blackouts, and tips for Twitter users in the 1st World to aide to those currently in Tehran.

And now, to take the edge off an otherwise intense and anxiety laden blog; Iranian ladies making revolution look sexy:


UPDATE: By my estimate, I'm seeing nearly 20-30 #iranelection tweets per second now.

They're Always Drunk In Philadelphia

Wow. Either the cast of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia enjoy screwing with our perception of them by improving in character on live television, or the cast of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia are actually no different in real life than their scripted characters.

It's 8am on location in Philadelphia and Danny Devito is HAMMERED. Beer in hand. Flanked left and right by Charlie Day (Charlie) and Rob McElhenney (Mac); as if handlers to an A-List Star (who were failing miserably at keeping him in line). Devito is being interviewed by the morning show of the local Fox affiliate. I'm sure his publicist was crying in a bathroom somewhere.

Amazing. The reporter interviewing him may or may not be drunk as well. Or maybe just very, very blonde.

maybe mama needs to be knocked out...

...and daddy needs to be euthanized; not leaving your infant in a hot car is parenting 101. This was the scene at El Cerrito BART yesterday.



While driving to my parents' East Bay home after work I noticed several news helicopters hovering overhead. My dad complained about the noise all the way through dinner. It wasn't until much later that I learned at about the time I was parking in front of their house an infant was being pronounced dead less than a mile away; a victim of his own parents and their negligence.

It would seem that it's not a good time to be a kid in the East Bay. At around 5am on Sunday a 2 year old and a 6 year old were both shot in Berkeley and on Friday a 2 year old was shot in Vallejo.


Won't somebody please think of the children?

Please??

~Z

Don't Call It a Come Back...

...call it a relapse. Or just call it a blog posting after nearly 8 months of complete silence. Perhaps the brevity of Fbook status updates just finally became too constrictive for me. Maybe I just have way too much time on my hands at work. Either way I'm back on the interwebz, stealin' ur sitez, with plans to post with far more regularity this time. So come on gorgeous, whataya say? Give me one more chance, for old time's sake?

Awww, I knew you'd forgive me. See? It's like we never parted, so why don't we just pick up right where we left off?



ROCKNROLLA: I'm a tad impressed. Ritchie actually had a touch of decency and talent left in him. A few quick notes: Ritchie tries (and fails) to add a strong central female to his usual cast of Limey low-lifes and shady characters, something completely absent in LOCK STOCK and SNATCH. Stella (Thandie Newton) ends up as eye-candy with an attitude, nothing more. Gerard Butler as One Two carries his weight as the leading man but the character wasn't written with much depth to begin with, and he is often overshadowed by the performance of Idris Elba (of THE WIRE fame, aka: Stringer Bell) as sidekick Mumbles. The real show-stealer is Toby Kebbell as Johnny Quid, the crack addicted character of titular relevance.



Those not familiar with Toby Kebbell would be savvy to check out the indie Brit sleeper DEAD MAN'S SHOES (Dir: Shane Meadows), starring Kebbell and Paddy Considine, one of the most beautiful, sad and frightening films that I have ever seen. Sadly, it is almost a complete unknown Stateside. While I'm more than tempted to digress into a rant about the merits of Shane Meadows, Paddy Considine, and why you're a fool for not going out and seeing DEAD MAN'S SHOES this very instant, I will instead settle for the gruesome still above and the brief trailer below.

Mama said knock you out,

~Z

Guy Ritchie bouncing back? Maybe...

Could it be? Could the Great Britian gospel of gangster still have some gasps of life and garner some gold under the direction of godfather Guy?

It's been 10 years since Ritchie and producer Matthew Vaughn brought a new face to the British Crime dramedy genre with LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, the low budget film that launched the once-promising careers of Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones, and Guy Ritchie as a young and innovative director. When Ritchie and Vaughn followed two years later with SNATCH, making their first big splash in the US market, the sky seemed to be the limit.

Enter Madonna and SWEPT AWAY. It seems that Guy's creativity and career was to go way of the title. He and Matthew Vaughn parted ways (a good move on Vaughn's party, who went on to produce and direct LAYER CAKE). Ritchie took another shot at the British Crime caper with REVOLVER, but missed horribly. Most of you probably have never even heard of REVOLVER as it had an extremely limited release Stateside after garnering low box-office numbers and atrocious reviews during it's domestic UK release (I had been living in London during it's release in 2005, and I must say that Jason Statham with long hair is just not a good look).



It seemed that Ritchie was through. Without Vaughn at his side as producer, his return to familiar territory had failed with REVOLVER. But now, three years later, Ritchie is back with ROCKNROLLA, another highly stylized, heavily postured Limey gangster flick, but from the reaction at festival screenings, this one might actually not be a stinker.

If ROCKNROLLA succeeds at coming at all close to the popularity of SNATCH, Ritchie will certainly be back on top of his game. The industry seems to have some faith in the return of Ritchie, as he's been picked up to direct the 2010 release of SHERLOCK HOLMES, a script which he also penned. No, this is not the 'other' 2010 Sherlock project staring Sacha Baron-Cohen as Holmes and Will Ferrel as Watson. Ritchie's SHERLOCK will be an action-thriller flick staring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as a less-than-bumbling Dr. Watson.

So, is Ritchie's career back on track? Possibly. But I'm holding my breath until this weekend when ROCKNROLLA hits US theaters.