Tag Archives: Gaspar Noe

46th & Vern

Yesterday, I had my birthday. Everyone wished me good luck.

Isn’t that a great song? I love that album. Crispin Glover is one of my favorite people. Remember when he was “Uncle Dell” in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart? How he stayed up all night making sandwiches?

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Filed under Faint Signals, Great Hamsters I Have Known, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Site Stuff, Thousand Listen Club

The Shnoz of Charles de Gaulle

Ahh, the French!

adore them. Their art, their culture, their contributions to the enlightenment of our world. Hate me all you want, but I never felt prouder of Donald Trump than I did when he refused to shake Angela Merkel’s hand for a photo op. Trump didn’t want to get France’s blood all over his hand, and Merkel’s mitts are positively oozing with the spilt plasma of Europe.

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

Songs To Scare You Stupid

So, maybe you’re going for a little more edge in your “haunted house”, this Halloween? Or do your fireside ghost stories need some extra oomph? Say no more, my young apprentice.

From inside Torture Garden, Naked City, 1990.

From inside Naked City, 1990.

You can do much better than “Monster Mash” and Doom soundtracks to terrify trick-or-treaters. Please help yourself to some suggestions. You with the eggs and the toilet paper; take two. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Thousand Listen Club

When Broken Broke

From 1989 to 1992, all anyone knew of Nine Inch Nails was prettyhatemachine. Your opinion of that one album was your opinion of Nine Inch Nails.

Before Broken, NIN’s sophomore EP, you could be forgiven for thinking Trent Reznor was the heir apparent of electronic Goth, following the dark path of Joy Division and Depeche Mode. Reznor was the scion of a venerable HVAC company (founded 1888!), and probably spent much of his young life in the presence of gigantic, droning machines. “Industrial” was already wired into his veins.

For all your heating, cooling, and electro-goth needs!

For all your heating, cooling, and electro-goth needs!

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions, Thousand Listen Club

Bad Cinéaste

I have a confession to make. Though I consider myself quite the erudite film scholar, in many ways I have no cause to place myself above the average lumpen moviegoer.

  • I confuse the name ZaSu Pitts with Zuzu Petals, a minor character from the execrable Andrew Dice Clay comedy The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.badcin1
  • I am inexplicably incensed at the sight of the cover of the film Metropia, and Audrey Tautou’s picture on the front of Amélie. To date, I have not seen Amélie, even though it’s from a director I like, thanks to its coy, nauseatingly precious cover shot.
  • I haven’t seen Precious, except on YouTube, because apparently I laugh at the wrong things.
  • I can’t stand whispering in movies any more than I can in the theater. A notable exception would be 1982’s Poltergeist. M. Night Shyamalan has abused whispering so much his actors should be forced to use air horns.
  • I’ve never seen Avatar. Any movie that uses a default computer font for its title isn’t worth a billion dollar budget, let alone my attention.
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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Worst Of All

Bouillon Cube Theory

Almost every single aspect of my personality can be explained by one simple fact: when I was a kid I ate a bouillon cube.

bouillonI was too young to know better. I had witnessed the flavor sorcery that resulted when my parents would cook with a bouillon cube. Surely, I reasoned, if it made dinner taste that good, then a whole cube of it would be a trip to flavor heaven.  I even imagined it might expand into a steak or a burger, like in The Jetsons. So one evening I sneaked into the kitchen, unwrapped a beef cube, popped it in my mouth, and chewed it up. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Eatable Things, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Thousand Listen Club