So I've got that going for me

I played poker last night... which was fun.

6 Hip Hop/Acoustic Guitar Mashups

Somebody named Dert has mashed up a bunch of Jose Gonzalez songs with some great hip hop tracks, and produced six of what will definitely be top-played songs on my stereo.

The hip hop artists chosen are varied in both style and success, but each is mellowed by the acoustic guitar hooks cut from Jose Gonzalez' tracks; Dert even manages to breathe life into the overplayed "Dreams" by The Game. So far, I can only find 6 tracks on YouTube, here they are:

Aceyal "The Greatest Show on Earth"/J.G. "Hint"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8KBBCWBiTY

MF Doom "My Favorite Ladies"/J.G. "Remain"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMIiFgsQe-0

Kanye West & Mos Def "2 Words"/J.G. "Slow Moves"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taIQ5OXyG4M

The Game "Dreams"/J.G. "Crosses"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WCuGVNuWh8

Common & Erykah Badu "The Light"/J.G. "Heartbeats"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORDtPZDeik

Deadweight on Velveteen/J.G. "Good Mourning"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ8MWlKWpTM


I can't say enough, these are so fun to listen to. Let me know if you find them anywhere else, I'd like to buy the tracks.

8/22/08 4:44 PM - I found an interview with the guy Dert, turns out he did this back in 2006... news to me, anyway, check it out:

http://all-things-go.blogspot.com/2006/03/all-things-go-presents-dert-interview.html

Drunk History

My friend Andrew turned me onto 'Drunk History,' a series of very funny shorts on YouTube directed by Derek Waters.

In the films, historical events are reenacted by actors, as they are being told by very drunk people; actors Michael Cera, Jack Black, Clark Duke, and others take part. I'm not sure who was behind Drunk History, but Micheal Cera and Clark Duke have worked together before; creating a miniseries of webisodes on http://www.clarkandmichael.com/ about a couple of young screenwriters making it in LA, which are absolutely hilarious.

Anyway, my favorites are volumes 2 and 2.5, covering Benjamin Franklin...

Juno - Boo Hiss

I watched the movie Juno in its entirety last night, and I didn’t like it at all, in fact I borderline hated it. “Indie,” “Quirky,” and “Comedy” are three of my favorite qualities to be found in a movie, so by all accounts I should have really enjoyed Juno, but I didn’t… honest to blog.

7 months ago, while in line at the movie theater, my friend and I were waffling between Juno and No Country for Old Men. We settled on Juno after a friend of ours, who also happened to be waiting in line also, said he was seeing it, 'What a coincidence, it must be a sign.’ We said. So my friend and I sat down in the theater and after watching the fun, half-animated and half-live action opening credits, I was ready for an off-beat, indie hit... but then the characters started talking and everything went horribly wrong. After cringing through the first 20 minutes of dialogue, which I later characterized as sounding 'like it was written by a 35 year old woman who had listened to her 12-year-old niece and a friend talk to each other over the phone for 10 minutes, immediately read Catcher in Rye in one sitting and then decided to write a screenplay’, my friend and I left to see No Country, which was epic.

Since then, nearly everyone that I know who has seen Juno has said they loved it; the movie won an Oscar for best screenplay, just like ‘indie darling’ Little Miss Sunshine in 2007. ‘How could I be so wrong?’ I thought. I finally came to the conclusion that if the movie was that bad in the first twenty minutes, but still won an Oscar for best screenplay, it must have pulled a historic 180-degree turn immediately after I left the theater, and that I’d have to watch it again.

So my girlfriend and I rented it, we watched the whole thing, and you know what? It never got any better than those first 20 minutes. The dialogue continued to be uncomfortably bad; the storyline, although interesting initially, never picked up steam and lumbered to its climax; any of the fun delicate ironies in the movie were overpowered by painfully obvious ones; and the whole effort just tried too hard to be for lack of a better word, ‘indie.’ The only things I liked about the movie was the introduction to songstress Kimya Dawson; a plain, middle-class, suburban landscape that was somehow warm and comforting (turns out it was filmed in Vancouver, neat); Jennifer Garner’s character was pretty convincing I guess; and Michael Cera was ehhhh (hand-wobble), ok, and I might be giving him too much credit because literally the only time I laughed during the movie was when Paulie Bleeker (Micheal Cera) said he didn’t like Katrina De Voort because she smelled like soup, and that her whole house smelled like soup. That was pretty funny.

So why is everyone so jazzed up about Juno? Here’s my reasoning behind the populace’s misplaced enthusiasm... I think that people wanted to see another successful 'indie', like Little Miss Sunshine, and Juno was really the only movie that had a shot at being that in 2008. So everyone said they liked it, even if it was subpar. It’s my theory that in the last 4 years or so, the “Enviro-me” trend of living more environmentally friendly lives, eating organic foods, living a life that makes you happy instead of wealthy, etc, has created a larger audience for ‘indie’ movies, which people view as ‘organic’, and ‘real’; a mom-and-pop shop to MGM’s Walmart. Unfortunately, they haven’t had the chance to see how good ‘good’ indie movies are yet, so they just show their support for whatever comes their way. Well, at least they're trying.

While I appreciate John Q. Public’s newfound enthusiasm for independent movies and I know his movie going dollars will lead to a better crop of them in years to come, I hope that everyone’s tastes mature rapidly, because I don’t know how many more Juno’s I can take.


A sampling of dialogue from the best screenplay winner of 2008:

Leah: Yo Yo Yiggady Yo.

Juno MacGuff: I'm at suicide risk.

Leah: Juno?

Juno MacGuff: No, it's Morgan Freeman. Do you have any bones that need collecting?

Leah: Only the one in my pants...

Juno MacGuff: I'm pregnant.

Leah: What? Honest to blog?

Juno MacGuff: Yeah. Yeah, it's Bleekers.

Leah: It's probably just a food baby. Did you have a big lunch?

Juno MacGuff: No, this is not a food baby all right? I've taken like three pregnancy tests, and I'm forshizz up the spout.

Leah: How did you even generate enough pee for three pregnancy tests? That's amazing...

Juno MacGuff: I don't know, I drank like, ten tons of Sunny D... Anyway dude, I'm telling you I'm pregnant and you're acting shockingly cavalier.

Leah: Is this for real? Like, for real for real?

Juno MacGuff: Unfortunately, yes.

Leah: Oh my GOD. Oh shit! Phuket, Thailand!

Juno MacGuff: There we go. That was kind of the emotion that I was searching for on the first take.

I'm Back... Apparently Reebok is too

There’s nothing like taking 20 days off from contributing to a blog... ahhhhh... I feel refreshed. Well, time may have passed but my taste in commercials remains the same, excellent.

Here is my favorite one at the moment; it is a relatively new spot from Reebok (I forgot they existed, to tell you the truth) in anticipation of the upcoming football pre-season/season.

I'm not a big football fan by any means, but this commercial kind of gets me revved up. I think that the play on animal instincts is very clever, and the music, Train Song by Vashti Bunyan is beautiful. Plus, I’m a sucker for slow motion cinematography set to music (hellooooooo Wes Anderson), so that might have something to do with it too. If they bring back Terry Tate Office Linebacker and I just might consider buying something...