Do yourself a favor--DL some of the songs linked in the current playlist at the right. Right-click on the title and save as. The links are courtesy of getyourselftogether! and SXSW.

*********


The Curtis Brothers rock out.(more pics)

The Secret Machines were quite good tonight. Their entire album is available to listen to on their website, so it's worth a look, though they have a very big, percussive sound that you need the full stereophonic effect to appreciate.

I was expecting the worst when I showed up and there were two guys slam dancing to the opening act, this somewhat lame noise band called Read Yellow. Plus there were another three guys who were neck tattoo types--you know what I'm talking about. Stocky fuckers who probably knew their way around a shiv. They're too stocky to be able to dance, so they just kind of nod in a fierce yet awkward way to the music. They along with the weird dancer guys had cleared a big space right in front of the stage which was pretty annoying because the place was crowded. Then fortunately they disappeared after the opening. There are only three band members, and the keyboardist only plays bass on about a third of the songs, which is somewhat odd given their sound. The drums make up for it though, and they have a rather thundering effect--like you had three drummers playing the same thing at once, only each a millisecond off so you get more of a reverberating effect. Their set seemed short (and no encore), but definitely a cool band to see live.

********

Movies seen in the past week:

Dumb and Dumberer: The moron in me really wanted to see this until it came out and got some of the worst reviews since...ever. Then the moron in me became kind of lukewarm on seeing it. Then it showed up on Starz On Demand, and the thought of watching it for free whenever I felt like became too tempting. I'm weak. So I plopped down and spent 84 minutes of my life watching it. Would I do it again? Eh...maybe. It's not a good movie. The guy who plays Harry (Derek Richardson) sucks and the writing, which generally sucks, really sucks for him. But Eric Christian Olsen really nails a young Lloyd Christmas. He really redeemed the movie in a lot of ways, to the point that I don't hate myself for watching the movie. Plus there are a lot of winks, nods, and froggymops to the original movie, the most obvious of which revolves around the time Lloyd betrayed Harry for a girl, which is referenced in the original movie when Harry "steals" Lauren Holly's character.

Das Experiment: As part of my quest to see all good German movies, I saw this one On Demand last Tuesday. Fucking intense. And very good. The premise is an undercover reporter (Moritz Bleibtreu, who played the boyfriend in Run Lola Run) takes part in a prison simulation experiment--essentially the famous 1971 Stanford prison experiment that most people have heard about. I can never really judge German movies objectively because I automatically like them just for being German. But this one got good reviews so it's worth a look. Plus it has all the key elements of German film: slightly out-of-place electronic music, random nudity, and it's in German. Did I mention it's intense? It's fucking intense.

*******

Das Experiment is particularly interesting in light of everything that's happened in Iraq recently. I had never heard more than simple anecdotal one-liners about the Stanford experiment, so I looked to see what actually happened and found this great website done by Phillip Zimbardo, the psychologist who ran it. There's a chronological explanation of what happened including video clips. Extremely interesting stuff.

*******

This trailer is absolutely devastating. Cripplingly hilarious. I thought the first Anchorman trailer was funny, but this one might be even better...and anytime you can make two regular-length trailers that are this funny, you have to love it. I think my favorite part is the question mark on the teleprompter. July 8.

*******

Meanwhile, the second Garden State trailer is also up. This time it actually offers some insight into what the movie is about, while continuing to use music I like (Postal Service, Travis). July 30.

*******

For a lot more on the Rapture, check out getyourselftogether!. Lots of random mp3s, including "Out of the Races..."


Gabe Andruzzi rocks the cowbell; Luke Jenner stands by in amazement