Deconstruction of the old George Lucas Instructional Building at USC.
I may or may not have stood there watching this for a good 15 minutes…
Well, so much for my college haunts.
The Un-Tumblr.
Only one calorie.
Jul 02
This is the song I have to listen to every 4th of July.
Probably not the happiest one for the occasion, but it seems a lot more fitting this year. A fantastically bittersweet song for a summer which has so far been lost to the rains.
Jul 01
That cash register symphony at the opening is one of the more astonishing things ever appearing on weekly television.
Close Encounters is always a weird film for me, because I think that it’s got severe pacing problems. Between every legitimately interesting scene (the tribal chant, Neary caught up in the alien beam, the race towards the mountain at the end), there’s another that just bores the hell out of me (the cheering Frenchmen at the U.N. comes to mind here). But this? This is the most excited I’ve ever been in a movie. Expressions of language, music, extraterrestrial life all encased perfectly in two minutes and change. By the time we hit “It’s the first day of school,” I’m done. I’m sold. This is how film should make you feel.
Good Neighbor Comedy, possibly L.A.’s most underrated resource, takes on Laker fans. Yes, it’s awkward.
“ After all, in the rubble of this fury, what remains for artists and bohemians who are legitimately trying to be part of a counterculture? You get the sense that if Jimi Hendrix were to show up in Echo Park today, he’d be publicly mocked in a style section piece on blipsters for wearing a feathered fedora. Duchamp would have given up as soon as he appeared on dadaist-or-douchebag.com. And Warhol would be demonized as a hipster gentrifier for setting up his factory in a Brooklyn warehouse. Critics continue to complain that we live in an era where all art is derivative and devoid of substance. But if Hendrix, Duchamp, or Warhol were alive today, we’d be doing our damnedest to derail their self-expression, dismissing them as fucking hipsters.
—
Robert Lanham in “Look at This Fucking Hipster Basher”
This is the best articulation I’ve ever seen of the problem with Hipster Bashing: If you’re partaking, you probably 1)are/were one and 2)would rather complain than try to make anything yourself.
(via raptoravatar)
Bold emphasis mine, and with good reason. Very often our friend over at “Synaptic Burble Baubles & Infinite Ammo,” which is a name I like saying way too much, comes out with an absolute gem about the way we conduct ourselves. If all of us put one-tenth of the energy we put into snark into something constructive or creative, we’d have a much richer community.
That’s why I’m glad to be back on the writing horse, and I cannot wait to see what you come up with.
“Weird Al” Yankovic, “Nature Trail to Hell”
Because after all of the stories of famous death on the news, the only thing I can think of is the following: “If you like the six o’clock news, then you’ll love Nature Trail to Hell in 3-D!”
caro:
Your least favorite video for the next five minutes: “Alcohol,” Millionaires. “Every time I’m at the bar / You wanna pay / Go ahead and buy me a drink / You won’t get laid.” Oh, you kids.I actually thought this was sort of hysterical. But, um, Warped Tour? Really?
This sounds like the theme song to an 80s movie…in the Mirror Universe. The one from Star Trek where everyone is evil and Spock has a goatee? Yeah, that’s where this makes any sense.
Which annoys me, because I’ve been trying to get that exact same beat that’s behind them nailed down for years, and so I find myself loving the track once my face has stopped pulling shapes of utter disgust and horror.
Isabel Lucas is an evil plot by Michael Bay. He’s trying to get me to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen using this awesome special effect with a SAG card. I’ll tell you now that it’s not going to work. Maybe.
I bet she’s not even a practical effect, just a CGI rendering. Bay, you hack!
“ My daughter says now that the king of pop is dead, I am the bestest singer ever. Mission accomplished.
