A Great Movie Title.

I love monster movies, but I have never heard a monster movie with as great a title as this one.

My Ad.

I restrained myself from posting about the new MacBook (see image) that has consumed most of my web-surfing over the past week. I have been going back and forth on the decision to sell my powerbook to buy a shiny new white MacBook. I finally decided to try and sell and see how much I could get for it. If I can get $1400 for it, then it means I only need to spend an additionally to get an upgraded (RAM and HD) white MacBook. This is essentially the same amount of money I was about to spend on a gig stick of RAM for my powerbook. So instead of getting RAM, I could possibly get an entirely better (except for graphics processing) notebook. Anyways...I posted an ad on ehmac.ca's classified. However, I went above and beyond and created a movie and website to advertise my powerbook.

The Greatest Man I Ever Did Meet.

This summer, I am working at the Computer Help Desk at my university (The University of Victoria) for my first Co-op work term. My work includes answering phone calls, emails, and personal visits from the staff, faculty, and students of UVic, all of whom come to us with all sorts of computer issues.

One such faculty member phoned me on Monday to let me know he would be switching offices on Thursday and that he may need help setting up his computer in his new office. On Thursday morning, one of my fellow employees received his call; he asked for me and told me that he would be moving to his new office in a few hours and that he may phone for assistance. His behavior reminded me a lot of my parents: they assume they do not know how to do anything technology-related and always call upon me for assistance for even the most simple of tasks.

A few hours later, I was chatting with an employee in the back room when I was called to the front desk; THE GUY was standing there, waiting for me. He told me that he was moving to his new office now and would like me to set up his computer. I agreed and met him at his new office, a few floors above. It turned out that he had one of the simplest computers to set up: a Mac. To be more precise, he had a Blue G3 iMac (they were later painted all white and called eMacs and have since been retired). Within a few minutes it was set up; all I had to do was plug both the power adapter and ethernet cable into the wall and plug the keyboard (with the mouse plugged into it) into the eMac. I then booted it up to make sure it was in fact connected to the internet; it was.

So why is this at all worth writing about? Well before I left, the following conversation transpired:

THE GUY: Would it be okay if I brought some chocolate down to the help desk for you?
ME: yeah.
THE GUY: Do you like chocolate?
ME: Definitely, I eat it all the time (I was smiling of course).
THE GUY: I would have brought you some alcohol, but I’d get in trouble.
ME: Yeah...probably.
THE GUY: I would bring down a case of beer otherwise.
ME: (I made some awkward laugh + comment combo I’m sure)

Well, this morning, he came by with a small bag from Shoppers Drugmart. It was filled with 4 specialty chocolate bars. This man is the nicest guy I have ever met. He was so kind and pleasant throughout all my conversations with him. He actually went out of his way to pay me back for the small (to me at least) service I provided for him. Not only did he act nice, he even had the nicest voice and demeanor about him as well. This guy was a saint; he would not hurt a fly. The point of this post? I met the nicest guy and got so much fucking chocolate.

Album Review 003: Stretched out with soldiers

Featured Album
Album We Don't Need To Whisper Band Angels & Airwaves Release Date May 23, 2006 Score
Featured Track
Start The Machine

The Track Listing
1. Valkyrie Missle 2. Distraction 3. Do It for Me Now 4. Adventure 5. Little's Enough	6. The War 7. The Gift 8. It Hurts 9. Good Day 10. Start the Machine

The Back Story

Last year, Blink 182 officially went on hiatus, giving birth to two new bands: Plus 44, made up of Mark Hoppus (bassist) and Travis Barker (drummer), and Angels & Airwaves, formed by Tom DeLonge + friends. Only one track has been released to the public from Plus 44 and it is very underwhelming. A&A, on the other hand, are about to release their debut album next tuesday having had an incredible teaser site over the last few months with a blockbuster-esque album trailer and a music video and single released already. It’s obvious Tom has a lot more initiative when it comes to creating music. He and Travis even formed a band, Boxcar Racer, a few years ago, creating a very popular and solid album. I’m well aware how obvious it is that I downloaded this album ahead of schedule; however, I like it so much that I’ll definitely be picking it up at HMV after it’s released next week. I recommend you do the same.

The Album

This album is better than every Blink 182 album. It is better than Boxcar Racer’s single album. Each track on this album is twice as good as Plus 44’s single released song. This is Tom DeLonge’s greatest musical achievement since the Dammit riff. The album has this intensely epic undertone throughout every song. Part of the reason for this is the way the songs all begin with long, mellow, and eerily profound intros that lead up into equally moody verses. The songs also don’t seem to fall into the habit that so many bands have where the choruses completely overpower the much more interesting and quieter verses; this gives the album a very mature and somewhat-tense sound. The epic sound can also be attributed to the military-esque percussion; the backbone of the entire album. The one thing you will notice after listening to the entire album start-to-finish, is that there is no obvious single or slow song. Each song seems to keep up a similar pace as the last, never forgetting that it is part of a whole; a story. This album definitely seems to be somewhat of a Rock Play. If I did not spend too much time looking at endless images of and reading forum threads about the new MacBook, I would put more time into finding out exactly what journey this album takes us on. The overall sound, though very unique, is not a surprising one. It has many similarities with the Tom-driven songs of Blink 182’s last album as well as the Boxcar Racer album. This sound is, like I’ve said, very solid, mature, and deep. This is not some radio-punk album, though you can bet you will hear these guys on the radio. If it weren’t for a few songs that I felt sounded a little too much like filler tracks, I would have given this album five full heart containers.

My Dog and I.

I woke up this morning to find the following note on my kitchen counter:

Ma Bod 001: The Rogue Toe

This is my right foot. Notice anything weird about it? Anything out-of-the-ordinary? No, not the sparse trail of hair from the base of my ankle to my biggie toe; that is very common. Give up? Check out my baby toe; see how it shys away from the camera? Well for some reason it has always been like that; it has always lay beneath the shadow of its more-proud neighbor (whatever that toe is called ... if my foot were a hand, that toe would be called the ring toe I think). Why does it shy away like that? Perhaps it is modest; unlike its neighbors (excluding the big toe), it can be moved independently from the rest of the pack.

My buddy, Kula, always used to comment about my toe; not the shy baby one, but the one to its left. One day, he coined a pet name for it: The Rogue Toe. He noticed how it was always positioned slightly above all my other toes. Like a rogue warrior, off causing mayhem on its own, my rogue toe rose above the other toes, just enough for Kula to notice and name it.

This is the first of a mini series of articles that showcase a specific part of my body; you will never see any X-rated parts of my body.

Album Review 002: I want to sail between your thighs

Featured Album
Album Infinite Jest Band We Are The Fury Release Date January 24, 2006 Score
Featured Track
Better Off, This Way

The Track Listing

1. Better Off, This Way 2. Anesthetic Parade 3. Nation, Forgive Us 4. Parody At The Masquerade 5. Soap Opera

The Back Story

A few years ago, I was on purevolume.com when I stumbled across a band called “The Fury”. They had a very unique and incredibly upbeat and child-like quality about them. I bookmarked them and would listen to them every now and then. Last year I decided to check out their purevolume page again and noticed it redirected me to a band called “We Are The Fury” - their new name. However, it wasn’t just their name that had changed; their discography changed as well: they now had an EP on the horizon: "Infinite Jest". Over the following months, leading up to the EP’s release, I became more and more excited about this CD as they slowly added a few of the songs from it to their purevolume page. Finally it was released and to my dismay, it only included five songs. I could not bring myself to spend ten or so dollars (plus shipping, as these guys would not be setting foot in a Canadian record store for quite some time) on such a small number of songs. So I not to support both Amazon and We Are The Fury and basically forgot about them entirely. Then a friend of mine from one of my classes told me about this “place” where he could download “any album ever”. For some reason We Are The Fury popped into my head, so I asked him if he could download their EP for me; he could; he did; I got them.

The Album

When creating a band profile in purevolume, you are able to define your sound by specifying up to three genres of music you most closely coincide with. We Are The Fury chose Rock, Indie, and Alternative; I would have chosen Pop, Rock, and Indie. If I didn’t feature a song for you guys to listen to, I would describe these guys as being similar to bands like Hot Hot Heat, Ok Go, and Ima Robot. The most prominent similarity between these bands is the lead singers voice, which I find hard to describe in words (another upside to having a song accompany the review). I will, however, try my best by listing a series of adjectives that best describe the lead singer’s voice: youthful, somewhat-flamboyant (not in the lispy-faggy sense), feminine, high, tight, painful (not painful to listen to; he literally sounds like he could be in some kind of pain), somewhat-lazy, and distressful. This is an upbeat EP with nary a slow song; this is the kind of music you listen to if you want to convince a girl that your cool, not the kind you’d woo her with. It stars off with “Better Off, This Way”, the most upbeat song of them all. It begins with a deliciously bouncy/punchy intro (that ends up being the verses) that doesn’t waste any time introducing us to the whole band. The verse leads up into an unsurprisingly louder chorus that finishes with the quieter lyrics, “maybe it’s better off this way”. Naturally, we get a break-down after the second chorus that slowly builds up into the final forty seconds of chorus, ending quite abruptly. If they release (if they already haven’t) a single, this would be it. The second song begins with some muted lyrics and some sort of shaker that quickly lead up to a much louder and almost chorus-like verse. The volume then drops a little before quickly rising again for a typical basic-guitar and strained-voice combo chorus. The chorus falls into this singer + piano verse that is overwhelmed by the second and final chorus of the song; both the first and second songs are under three minutes. “Nation, Forgive Us” is the third song (middle song) and is my least favourite of the five. It begins with a bit o’ drums that are lead into the first verse with the bassist. Soon enough, Mr. Lyrics joins in, spitting out “You wanna talk about indecision?”. The verse eventually breaks down into what sounds like the pre-chorus, however, it takes us right back to another verse. Don’t worry though, the second pre-chorus leads into an overall louder chorus featuring an angrier twist on the lead singer’s voice. A very quiet and muted breakdown follows that leads again into the chorus that fades to black. The next song is substantially more mellow and less frantic. The verses feature some creatively whiny guitar solos over some periodic opening of the high-hat. Like the first song, the musicians resort to some basic guitar and piano work overshadowed by the lead singer’s friendly vocal track during the choruses. However, unlike the first song, this one ends the song with a wee bit of a guitar solo. The final song starts with the lead singer singing “I was a ghost from outer space” over a jumpy piano that swiftly feeds into the “official” verse. We then get a quick break-down right before the angriest and most complicated sounding chorus from the whole EP, which is ironic since the song’s basically about a guy proclaiming his loving and lustful feelings for some girl. VERSE. CHORUS. Then a drawn out instrumental part that lets the lead singer join in right before the third chorus. The song then begins its descent, lead by a small choir humming all the way to the end.

The Final Impressions

I decided to push the individual song reviews into the overall review as the EP was so short. The EP is very solid and has the band defining itself all the way through. Though these guys do not offer anything completely new to the scene, they separate themselves enough from the rest of the bands out there and create a fairly unique sound. However, if it weren’t for their vocalist, we would be left with some moderately talented musicians producing some been-there-done-that sounds, definitely not worth five full heart containers from yours truly. Fortunately, the vocalist can make or break a band, and the lead vocalist for these guys certainly makes this band what it is, hence my kind rating.

No Review This Week.

I have spent a lot of time on purevolume.com. Purevolume.com, like (what I see as) its rival, music.myspace.com, offers a band a chance to promote itself for free or fee; they can post pictures, videos, songs, blogs, and most importantly, accept friend and fan requests. I prefer purevolume because of its more professional and elegant design, it’s complete focus on music (myspace is more about promoting how great you can look at a certain angle), and it’s well designed home page. I have found a lot of the music I listen to on the home page of purevolume; granted, I have only found artists/bands I like that fall under the indie or emo genre, so if you prefer music from the opposite end of the music spectrum, I’d suggest trying a different site. I, like most people with their foot in “the scene”, pride myself on “discovering” bands before they step foot on TRL. Two such bands I have discovered before their debut album and TRL appearance, are Panic at the Disco! and The Academy Is... (both of which feature annoying terminating punctuation).

How do I find such bands? It has to do with three things:

1) I enjoy catchy, empty, upbeat indie/emo/alternative/pop/rock (and more) and so do a lot of other kids. This means that if I am enthusiastic about a band, there’s a good chance that at least one million other youth would feel the same way.

2) Purevolume constantly refreshes their home page with a slew of new featured bands, both unsigned and signed. If I bookmark at least one promising band a week, chances are I’m going to find out about a future success sooner than later.

3) Luck. It takes more than talent for a band to make it big; they also need the right connections and promotions. Relient K could own Avril Lavigne if they were force fed to us as much as “Complicated” was.

I also should mention, I don’t just “discover” the band on purevolume, I also wait for the debut album’s release until I can scoop it up from Amazon. However, the band I planned to review tonight (until I watched “The Weather Man” instead - good movie - makes you think), did not receive any kind of monetary thank you from my end. I have an excuse though: they have only released an EP and I have trouble buying 4-6 song CDs.

Now for the purpose of this post:

This week, I will be reviewing the EP, “Infinite Jest” from the band “We Are The Fury”. Until I tell you my opinion of them, form your own at their purevolume profile page.

A Sidenote: I started my first full time and coop job on Monday and work from 8 - 4 (on average), Monday - Friday. Thus, I have about 6-7 hours of free time during Sunday - Thursday nights. Subtract any time I spend in the bathroom (people might say I spend too much time in there), eating, touching up my ever-thinning hair, and spending time with my friends and girlfriend. Now you may realize why I may be less inclined to spend my few personal minutes each night to post on my sub-popular blog. Feel free to listen to music you like while I’m too busy to write about music I like.