I figured that using a song title from their first album was apropos as it represents my relaitonship with the second album. It is indeed growing on me the more I listen to it. Jess just pointed out a lyric that I had to share:
“I had never seen a set of eyes more hazelerer”
The Darkness’s first album “Permission To Land” absolutely blew me away as one of the best albums I’d heard in a long while, so naturally when their second album “One Way Ticket to Hell…and Back” came out on Tuesday I put on my best glam spandex catsuit, strutted into my local record store and said in my best British Falsetto “Where’s the new Darkness album, mate?” Sadly I found that it was Monday and I’d jumped the gun by a day so I would have to wait a day to plant my legs solidly in an “A” shape, raise my arm to the sky, purse my lips and rock out.
On Tuesday I had a groupie bring me the album at work (O.K. so it was my wife, but that doesn’t fit the story as well.) My first impression was a bit of disappointment. Not that it’s a bad album by any means. It was just that I was so blown away by the first album that naturally my expectations were high. After having a few more days with the new album, I’ve warmed a bit to it, but I can tell that it will never be as popular with me as “Permission to Land”. It’s definitely not quite as straight on rockin as “Permission”, but there is still much enjoyment to be had.
This album was produced by Roy Thomas Baker who produced Queen, Foreigner, Cheap Trick, The Cars and Devo. In fact, the piano on the album is the same piano used on Bohemian Rhapsody and still bears the red wine stains from Freddie Mercury. I would say the Queen influence can be heard quite heavily on this album. All in all I think it’s definitely worth a listen and most likely an addition to your collection, however I can’t quite call it as much as a “must have” as “Permission to Land” is. However the more I listen to it the more I like it and I still highly recommend it if you dug their first album. Still one of the best albums I’ve heard in a while.
The new album from The Darkness is out tomorrow! I will be procuring it at lunchtime. There will be severe rocking.
Music lovers check out www.pandora.com. Very cool. You can make your own music station by putting in an artist or song and pandora then uses the Music Genome Project to “program” the station with stuff you might like. You can give songs a thumbs up or thimbs down to help train it. You can try it for free for 10 hours, and if you decide you dig it, it’s only $36 a year!
It’s quite in depth in it’s methodology. Let’s take a call from a listener! Hello, you’re on the air!
While I still heartily recommend Mozilla Thunderbird for anyone who feels the need to have a mail client on their computer, or for those security freaks who think Google has some evil secret conspiracy going, I myself have become a full Gmail convert. I tried this once before but one thing sent me back to Thunderbird, and that was the fact that any mail I sent would show up as coming from my Gmail address instead of my heathallyn.com address. This has now been remedied. You can now set your address to show as coming from any address you actually own. There is a verification process involved so that not just anyone can enter you email as the “from” address, and now any mail I sen via Gmail shows up as coming from my heathallyn.com address, and all replies are sent to my heathallyn.com address (which in actuality just forwards to my Gmail address anyway. Basically this allows you to use Gmail as an email client for you current address, just as you would Thunderbird, Outlook or any other client.
I totally dig Gmail’s interface and their completely different philosophy on mail handling (using “Labels” instead of “Folders”, and much more). This way, I don’t have to worry about whether or not a certain email I’m looking for is on my home or work computer, as it’s all in my online Gmail account. I can easily use the search function to find any mail I’m looking for or sort by labels. I can set up filters to automatically apply labels to incoming mail.
As I’ve watched Gmail it has just kept getting better. One of the few downsides to be aware of is that there is no official way to set up an email distribution list in Gmail (as in you type in one name, and it sends to multiple people), but there is an unofficial work around to do so and they very well may add this in the future. You can also download Gmail Notifier to check every 2 minutes and notify you of new mail.
There are a ton of other features which I find innovative and generally cool, but if you think you might be interested the best place to get all the info is from the source.
There is also an excellent site full of Gmail tips. Join us in the Gmail cult! I have a ton of invites if anyone needs one.
Last night we hit our second “Serenity” premiere in as many nights, details mentioned a few posts back. We drove 45 minutes out into Austin hill country to the ranch where they constructed the sets for the movie “The Alamo”. This was one of The Alamo Drafthouse’s famous “Rolling Road Shows”. We came equipped as true geeks with our Jayne hats that Jess had knitted.
In the middle of a courtyard of a the replica of an old Spanish fort stood a huge inflatable screen. They had Chinese take-out snacks as their themed meal (they often do themed meals). Before the movie they showed an Alamo Drafthouse produced short called “How To Swear in Chinese 101”, where an older Chinese man (a relative of one of the Alamo’s managers, who was also emceeing the night) taught us how to say things such as “you stupid little prick”, “let loose a big stinky fart” and of course the obligatory “Fuck you!”.
they then brought out the night’s guests, Jewel Staite and Summer Glau (two of the movie’s stars) to introduce the movie.
The second viewing solidified that this is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It is in my list of all time favorites. As intense as it was the first time, there were certain parts that were even more intense the second time. This weekend is very important for this film. See it. See it twice. Make your friends see it. Take a stranger to see it.
After the movie Jewel and Summer did a Q&A session, which was, naturally, very cool. My favorite story was when they were talking about an inside joke they had. The cast had all been watching a potential promo for the movie, with the classic movie trailer guy’s voice naming the stars, except that he mangle about three of their names, so Nathan Fillion started imitating the movie trailer guy and mispronouncing every name in the cast in amusing ways. I also got to ask them a question which can not be detailed here due to spoileryness.
I wish I could adequately express the coolness that is The Alamo Drafthouse, but it’s really something that must be experienced.
On a side note here, I know we constantly sing the praises of The Alamo Drafthouse, and shall continue to do so, but I can’t tell you how many times that Jess and I think “Will and Annika would love this,” about some event or homemade Alamo preview they show beforehand. One that struck me in particular was this one. Keep in mind, we’re moving into our condo at the end of November so we’ll have room for guests.
They always have custom made funny little clips from movies or semi-celebrities in clips about not talking during the movie. Their latest one is to show the clip from “Firefly” where book tells Mal that if he takes advantage of someone he’ll go to a very special level of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre. They all end with a text tag line on the screen, in this case something like “Don’t talk during the movie or you will go to a very special level of hell with only child molesters for company.”
On another side note: the clientele at the Alamo Drafthouse all seem to be a sort of “kindred spirits”. The energy always seems so positive. At the screening people picked up after themselves, and surprisingly when I used one of the porta potties at the very end of the night, it was still in good enough shape that I would have actually taken a seat had I needed to. I think that says a lot about the crowd.
Go see this movie as soon as humanly possible and be prepared for a very wild ride. Incredibly witty and emotionally intense. You will be exhausted at the end, but in a good way.
Some of the best dialogue ever (as you’d come to expect from Joss Whedon), action scenes that can stand up to the best of them, and emotional involvement like I felt after reading “Lord of the Rings”. You feel as if you’ve been through an experience, not a movie.
[not really a spoiler but you might draw leading conclusions from this statement – highlight to read]
If you don’t cry at the end of this movie, I suspect you are at least part robot, alien or zombie. Even highlydisciplined ninjas would shed a tear
[End of semi-spoiler]
I think that most of the people who read this blog are very familiar with the upcoming movie “Serenity“. This post is for those who may not be so familiar. I’d actually be surprised if anyone reading this falls under that category, but better safe than sorry! If there are people not familiar with this movie, then that needs to be remedied, and I am doing my part.
Who, by the way, I’ve always thought (and still think) is incredibly cool, intelligent, talented, intriguing, and beautiful if a bit self-destructive possibly.
Why is this one for Jenny? Because it’s about Oasis. Now I think I remember reading that she may have gotten over her whole Oasis thing, but mine is just starting.
As with all the prequels, I am of two minds with this film. There is a definite side of me that loved this film and without a doubt it’s the best of the prequels. There is the other side of that also has plenty of nits to pick and recognizes the familiar flaws (some really bad writing and acting). Overall my “enjoyed it” side wins out, but I also fell that a large part of that is the nostalgia. This film was as powerful as it was to me because of my fondness for the original trilogy. When taken for what it is, it’s place in the mythology and its purpose in the overall story it kicks ass. Taken alone and set aside as just a film, I think that I look a bit askance in its direction. There’s a definite dichotomy within me concerning this film as well as the other prequels (that being said, I am one of the few who actually liked the first two prequels despite the nits that I could pick with it).
I am very glad Lucas kept it dark and intense and didn’t cave to the groups complaining that this PG-13 rating ruined it as a “family” film or whatever.
I found it a bit slow to get going (well not necessarily “slow” since it was action right from the start, but not incredibly engaging right off) but the further it went on the more it sucked me in.
I decided today that one of the reasons the original trilogy is superior is that Lucas was not some revered “god” at that point and the actors were probably more free to ad lib or change up Lucas’s stilted writing to make it more natural. There’s a famous quote from Harrison Ford where he told George at some point while filming the first trilogy (paraphrased) “You can write this shit, but you can’t say it!” I have a feeling there’s probably far less freedom to tamper with “The Great Lucas’s” work these days.
That and I firmly believe that Lucas is a victim of buying into his own hype and getting totally lost and confused within his own mythology.
Don’t get the wrong impression though, by the end of the movie I was wide-eyed, jaw dropped, and teary-eyed just like the kid who saw “Empire Strikes Back” 16 times during its initial theatrical run, and the original trilogy countless times (in all its incarnations) since. Those movies are a huge part of who I am today, from my love of movie making to my many fond memories involving me, friends, and collections of Star Wars toys (and the painful memory of how, once I’d outgrown them, I took them all out to a friend’s piece of land in the country and we shot them all to pieces with guns not knowing how I would be kicking myself later on).
The force will be with me…always.
Now to just wait for the Super Mega VIP Deluxe Boxed Director’s Post-final cut Limited Top Secret Ultimate Platinum Jedi Master Edition.
