“Wanted”, Starring Angelina Jolie, Some Dude, And Morgan Freeman Is So Bad, I Have Renamed it “LOOM: THE BINARY THREADS OF FATE!!!!” (with four exclamation points)

 

When people ask me what I did this weekend, I will have to tell them that I saw the film “Wanted”. I wanted to see “Wall*E”. But some friends and I (Bombs, Enigs, and Crowley) decided that “Wanted” would be a laugh riot. And we were right for the most part.

 

 

*SPOILER ALERT*: If you actually want to see this fine piece of film making for yourself, I suggest you do not read on. As I will fully summarize, in great detail, the events that take place in “Wanted” or as I like to of it (and I will allow the studio to quote me on the DVD box cover when it comes out in late August) “Real. Fast. Deals with situations kids face every day.” – York Roberts Digital Failure.

 

So the film begins and it opens with a se-up that was poorly ripped off from “Fight Club”. Essentially The Dude Who Isn’t Morgan Freeman Or Angelina Jolie (or TDWIWIMFOAJas I will call him from this point forward) is a pathetic loser who works in an office with a fat boss who clicks a red stapler in his ear (that shit is DEFINITELY not legal, by the way). It’s sort of like a bad rip off of “Fight Club” with the setting of a bad rip off of “Office Space”.

TDWIWIMFOAJ is miserable, has anxiety problems that are so severe they make time slow down (more on this in a second) and his semi-attractive girlfriend is sleeping with his semi-handicapped best friend at work. Much to his dismay, but not enough to encourage him to kick her out of his apartment or stop being friends with him. Yup, TDWIWIMFOAJ is living a “meaningless existence”.

Now, on to setting, it is safe to assume the movie takes place in New York or Chicago or some major metropolitan city. However, it contains a) several castles, b) a skyscraper made of gold and c) streets that aren’t full of traffic. AMAZING!

So, like 10 minutes in, the story inexplicably cuts away from TDWIWIMFOAJ, who also is a bastard, as his father left him when TDWIWIMFOAJ was 3 days old or something like that, and shows us some guy go into a giant skyscraper during sunset. Here is what the script MUST look like:

Guy: (throws a bullet, weirdly shaped on desk to girl) Don’t worry (scoffs) if I was here for you, you’d be dead already.

Girl: (acts surprised….then relieved)

Guy: (URGENTLY) Where did it come from?

Girl: (wistfully) It looks like you have many enemi- (FALLS FORWARD AND HAS BEEN MURDERED)

Guy: SONOFABITCH!!! (Runs down a hall to an elevator. Pushes a bunch of office workers out of the way, presses an elevator button and stands there for like 5 seconds…gets on the elevator and pushes off of it, sprints full speed and jumps THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THE SKYSCRAPER, shoots and kills 6 henchmen, one by CURVING a bullet, and lands in a window of the skyscraper all of the henchmen are on, which is roughly 60 yards away from the one he jumped out of).

So, let me make a couple of points here. The first is that the office building he jumped out of was in NO WAY related to TDWIWIMFOAJ’s office building. Secondly, apparently whatever city they are in also has little to no gravity. Thirdly, the building he jumped into is a golden skyscraper. No, seriously it is made of gold.

So then this random building jumping guy gets shot in the head from like 10 miles away by some guy on a cell phone with a giant gun. Awesome.

Nothing really makes sense.

I’ll do you the favor of skipping about 10 minutes of fluff and let you know that one day TDWIWIMFOAJ is refilling his prescription for anxiety meds and then Angelina Jolie or “Fox” appears next to him at the counter. She makes cute faces but says nothing. That sums up most of what she does in the movie.

The guy who killed the guy on the roof with the giant gun, he’s blonde, so we’ll just call him BlondeGuy, shows up in the Brooks Pharmacy or whatever the hell they are in and starts blasting at them with guns and shit. Fox saves TDWIWIMFOAJ by pulling him aside. The whole time, he’s complaining about stupid shit. They get into a crazy shootout, somehow TDWIWIMFOAJ gets away and is standing in the parking lot having a nervous breakdown when BlondeGuy is about to get him but then Fox does that thing with the car where she Tokyo Drifts that shit just right so TDWIWIMFOAJ gets in and isn’t dead. Sick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fox gets on the hood of the car with a shotgun and tries to kill BlondeGuy but apparently, even though she can curve a bullet and shit, she is COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of hitting BlondeGuy at point blank range. And vice versa. Strange, no?

Somehow they get away and TDWIWIMFOAJ wakes up at a factory (a LOOM…its important) with Morgan Freeman (who I don’t think has a name in the movies, because he IS Morgan Freeman) and Common (again, no name required) and some other people. Here is the scene:

TDWIWIMFOAJ: Who are you people? (scared) I think you have me mixed up with someone else?!?

Morgan Freeman: We knew your father. He was killed by BlondeGuy. Here’s a gun, shoot the wings off of some flies.

TDWIWIMFOAJ: THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!

Morgan Freeman: Impossible is Nothing! ADIDAS!!!!

TDWIWIMFOAJ: What?

Fox: Just do it or I’ll shoot you, you whiny baby.

TDWIWIMFOAJ: (HAVING PANICK ATTACK) AAAHHHHH…(Fires gun)..(runs away from Fox).

Morgan Freeman: (walks over with a handful of flies with detached wings) See. Welcome to the Fraternity!

TDWIWIMFOAJ: What? I was having a panic attack.

Morgan Freeman: That wasn’t a panic attack, your heart was beating at more than 400 beats per minute and it allowed you to slow down time and do some unearthly shit. You are one of a few people in the world who can do that. Your father could. Now that bitch is dead because of BlondeGuy. Do you want to join us? I’ll give you all of your father’s money!

Fox: JOIN US!

TDWIWIMFOAJ: NO!!! (runs away).

So of course TDWIWIMFOAJ wakes up in his bed next to his semi-attractive girlfriend and thinks it was all a dream.  Goes to the pisser and drops the gun he used to take the wings off the flies. Freaks out. Checks his ATM balance, of course, it’s like 3 million. Goes into work, tells off his boss and then beats up his best friend. Awesome, no?

The next part of the movie features a montage of TDWIWIMFOAJ getting his ass kicked which is masquerading as “training”. One guy punches him over and over. Another guy stabs and cuts him with knives. Then of course he has the target practice, where he can’t do ANYTHING right. The montage includes footage of him lying in a bathtub full of white wax. Some Russian guy explains that the wax is a medical secret that heals people like 10 times faster. Right. So every day he gets more cut up and beat to shit only to be healed by a magic bath of wax, a vodka toting Russian guy (who is clearly NOT a part of the fratsassins and who COULD ONLY BE a janitor) and a bunch of rats. Apparently, even though the training facility is in a castle, it is full of rats.

Oh, important note. When TDWIWIMFOAJ arrives at the castle for the first time, he finds out it is a loom. Apparently the fratsassins began in the 7th century as a group of weavers. Yup.

Eventually TDWIWIMFOAJ stops being such a pussy and decides he’s going to study every hit his father ever made and become all badass. So, in a separate montage, he beats the shit out of the guy who was punching him and slices up the dude with the knives. Then he learns how to curve a bullet around Fox’s head.

 

 

At this point, I’d like to mention that in spite of the sexual tension between TDWIWIMFOAJ and Fox, nothing is fulfilled. They like make out one day in front of TDWIWIMFOAJ’s semi-attractive girlfriend. But that’s about it.

So, now we know that Fox and TDWIWIMFOAJ are skilled assassins. But who is placing the orders for them? Who do they work for? Who is their boss? Now, my assumption was that Morgan Freeman was some sort of vigilante genius who was picking the targets. I mean, I didn’t think about it much, but he seems like the boss of the fratsassins. So why not?

I was wrong.

When TDWIWIMFOAJ finally completes his training, he meets up with good old Morgan Freeman in the loom, and Morgan is studying a piece of cloth that has been woven by the machines. Scene:

Morgan: There’s a pattern here.

TDWIWIMFOAJ: (confused and incredulous) What?

Morgan: NOTHING IS RANDOM! IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING! ADIDAS!

TDWIWIMFOAJ: Why do you keep saying that?

Morgan: See the threads (looks through a magnifying glass) the ones that miss that are horizontal are 0’s, the ones that miss vertically are 1’s. (Writes down a series of binary code on a sheet of paper).

TDWIWIMFOAJ: It’s in binary code?

Morgan: Yes. I decode this shit and it gives us the names of the people we kill. See (shows him a piece of paper that says some name).

TDWIWIMFOAJ: This shit makes no sense at all. What happened to you Morgan Freeman? You used to be in movies that didn’t suck.

Ok. So aside from a few add ins, that is almost verbatim the way the scene plays out. They are fratsassins who take their orders from a mythic loom. Yup. GREATEST PLOTLINE EVER!

TDWIWIMFOAJ goes on his first mission with Fox, and he decides not to clip the guy he’s supposed to kill because he thinks to himself “It’s a fucking loom! This is absolutely the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard!”

Cut to a scene where Fox convinces him that he MUST do it. She explains that when she was a child some dude roasted her father alive and made her watch and HE ONLY GOT AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE THE FRATSASSINS FAILED ON THEIR MISSION TO KILL THAT GUY! So, she decided to do what any intelligent woman would do and become a hit man. Sick.

I really cannot wait until this movie premieres on TBS in December, by the way.

Anyway, Fox convinces TDWIWIMFOAJ to not be such a pussy. Again. Except she doesn’t do it by sleeping with him. Maybe the one weak point of the whole movie.

A montage of TDWIWIMFOAJ killing people in impossible ways ensues.

Until one night BlondeGuy returns and starts chasing TDWIWIMFOAJ around and then Fox shows up and so do the rest of the fratsassins. TDWIWIMFOAJ thinks he is about to shoot BlondeGuy, but actually its the FUCKING RUSSIAN JANITOR, who inexplicably shows up on some random ass rooftop to fight BlondeGuy. Then all of the sudden BlondeGuy shoots TDWIWIMFOAJ right in the arm.

TDWIWIMFOAJ goes to the wax baths to sleep his sorrow away. The rest of the fratsassins try to comfort him by being all like “well, he was just the janitor/exterminator anyway. And look at all the rats here. He wasn’t even good at his job. If anything, you did Morgan Freeman a favor because now we don’t have to be all awkward and fire him…”

They tell TDWIWIMFOAJ that BlondeGuy killed his father. Somehow TDWIWIMFOAJ extracts a bullet from his arm without any medical instruments and figures out it was made in Europe. So they go to Europe to find the guy who made it.

At the same time that this is happening, Fox gets her next assignment and it is TDWIWIMFOAJ. She looks pleased. Probably because all of the awkward looks he’s given her.

Skipping over the scene with the bullet maker…

Eventually they end up on a train. Fox and BlondeGuy and TDWIWIMFOAJ. The train is traveling very fast. They are shooting at each other. BlondeGuy and TDWIWIMFOAJ repeatedly fire at the same time and their bullets meet in mid-air and fall to the ground. Yes. This happens more than once.

Also, for being amazing shooters and skilled hit men, neither of them have very good aim.

Some conductor pulls the E-brake on the train right as it is going over the highest cliff on Earth (apparently) and the train starts to fall off the tracks.

Let’s completely ignore the fact that THOUSANDS of innocent people die in this train freefall. Done.

TDWIWIMFOAJ is about to fall out of the train when BlondeGuy grabs his hand. TDWIWIMFOAJ decides to shoot BlondeGuy in the stomach. Somehow he climbs back into the train and is about to finish BlondeGuy off when BlondeGuy drops the “Return of the Jedi” bomb, ”TDWIWIMFOAJ, I am your father. The Fratsassins ARE MURDERERS! I’m the good guy. That’s why I only shot you in the arm. Morgan Freeman is just randomly picking people to kill. His name came up and now he’s manufacturing names. I had to break away from the FRATSASSINS BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN THE SANCTITY OF THE LOOM!!! ARRRRRGGHHHHHH!!! (Dies)”.

Fox shows up to kill TDWIWIMFOAJ, but TDWIWIMFOAJ shoots out the floor of the train and they fall forever and ever and ever and ever.

The movie apparently KNEW it would be impossible to explain how in the fuck Fox and TDWIWIMFOAJ even got out of the chasm, because in the next seem TDWIWIMFOAJ wakes up in the apartment where BlondeGuy shot that other dude on the roof from in the beginning of the movie. The bullet maker is there. The apartment is like across the street from TDWIWIMFOAJ’s apartment. Apparently BlondeGuy was stalking his son for his whole life but as Bullet Maker explains, he only left him as a child so that TDWIWIMFOAJ could live a normal life. Blah Blah Blah. Apparently the Fratsassins used TDWIWIMFOAJ because they knew he was the only person BlondeGuy wouldn’t kill. It just gets crazy.

TDWIWIMFOAJ settles on a plan to tie wristwatch bombs to rats and let the rats take over the castle and then to kill EVERYONE.

In the final fight sequence, TDWIWIMFOAJ dumps a garbage truck full of rats with bombs on them into the castle. And somehow they spread out ALL OVER THE CASTLE in like 2 minutes. They blow up and the castle gets all sorts of Fucked up. TDWIWIMFOAJ climbs in and starts a massacre.

 

 

 

TDWIWIMFOAJ blows away like 45 Fratsassins in the Loom in like 2 minutes. Apparently he went from being trained by them to being far superior to them in 6 weeks. Also, during this Matrix-Esq. massacre scene, he kills people and catches their guns to continue killing them. He catches like 12 guns in this scene. Not only is he a great killer, but he apparently also has the hands of Chad Johnson. Oh, and once again, none of expert marksmen Fratsassins come remotely close to hitting TDWIWIMFOAJ at point blank range.

Next he kills the punching guy and knife guy as seen in earlier montage footage.

Then he finally arrives outside Morgan Freeman’s office.

Morgan decides to pull a page out of the classic action movie villain book and explain EVERYTHING for NO REASON AT ALL in the last scene while TDWIWIMFOAJ is surrounded by armed Fratsassins.

Scene:

Morgan: I saw my name come up and I decided to start making the targets. That’s true. But guess what? All of your names came up too bitches!

Fox: Is this true?

Morgan: Damn true. (Walks around and drops the sheet with each of their names at their feet). I know that this fratsassin thing is supposed to be about following the binary code that a loom provides. I know that. But the threads of fate did not work out in our favor. SO SHOOT THIS MOTHERFUCKER!! (He actually says “so shoot this motherfucker”. Funniest line Morgan Freeman has ever said).

Fox pulls out her gun and shoots a curved bullet that individually goes through the head of each Fratsassin standing in the circle around TDWIWIMFOAJ. It gets to hr head and she lets it go through as well. SHE RESPECTED THE THREADS OF FATE! AND SAVED TDWIWIMFOAJ!!!!

Morgan: Fuck this shit; I’m leaving (runs away).

In the last scene, TDWIWIMFOAJ looks at his bank statement, he’s poor again. Morgan Freeman foes to his office to kill him, but some temp is there instead and TDWIWIMFOAJ shoots Morgan Freeman from like 10 miles away with that giant gun in his father’s apartment.

Roll credits.

 

Loom: The Binary Threads Of Fate.

 

 

 

 

 

NINJA ATTACKS ASBURY PARK HIGH SCHOOL!!!

This is probably my favorite news story ever. Maybe not ever. But maybe.

It says that a Ninja was spotted outside a New Jersey high school this morning. Yes. A ninja. No, Yi Jianlian is from China and therefore cannot be considered a ninja (in spite of what “The Immortals” on the“Mortal Kombat” soundtrack tell us).

A ninja, with a sword was spotted. And somehow that traveled up the chain of command. And the high school was on lock-down for half an hour.

Amazing.

Falling Behind On The Real World. HIV Testing. Kanye West. Mike Myers Being Gay? Katy Perry Being Shitty.

I am now officially two weeks behind on the Real World Hollywood. How  this happened is beyond me. Maybe its because the two biggest stars of this season have left. Maybe.

Maybe its because the Celtics won the NBA Finals.

Maybe its because I’m running a 5K today.

Maybe its because there has been so much entertaining sports news lately.

I read a nice article this morning in the New York Times about free HIV testing throughout the Bronx. Seems like a great idea.

Actually, no, it seems like such an obviously GREAT idea that it is absolutely absurd that HIV testing IS NOT ALREADY just part of standard blood work for people whenever they visit a clinic, ER, doctor…etc.

I understand that the costs of tests has gone down dramatically over the last decade, but still, the article mentions its about $12 a test now. This should really just be a standard. It doesn’t need to be a religious/socio-economic thing. Just make it a medical standard. Thanks.

Kanye West went apeshit crazy over the whole Bonnaroo fallout. Kanye, I’m not “trying 2″ plot your downfall. But you can take a lesson from me and USE CAPS SPARINGLY!!!!

Here is the back story to people generally hating on him.

If you read both sides, he still seems like a a whiny brat. He has some good songs. The stage looks pretty cool and I’ve heard the tour is great. But I never condone people going on 3+ hours late with no explanation beforehand/during or immediately following the performance. If what he says is true, he should have come out after Pearl Jam got cleared away and told the crowd that if they wanted him to do his real Glow In The Dark tour thing it was going to take a couple of hours to set up. He could have even said something like “I can do a regular show and be ready in an hour or do a crazy good show and be ready by 6:00 a.m.” and asked the crowd to vote. But that shit didn’t occur to him. So he deserves the flack.

Mike Myers is apparently gay. Or supposedly gay.

“The Love Guru” is still a fate worse than death.

And Katy Perry, whose name I have seen on iTunes apparently used to be a christian singer. But her label decided to get her all sex’d up to sell some records (or maybe some iTunes singles…?).

The funny thing is, I can see this type of thing working like in the 80’s when people actually cared about shit. Why does it even matter? She should still be hyper-Christian and sell records looking all skanky and singing about sex. Hell, that might make for an EVEN BIGGER cash cow. America’s heartland loves Christian girls gone bad.

 

 

Starbuck’s Is A FAILURE!!! No More CD’s or Oversized iTunes Download Cards. No More Tall, Venti Whatever The Fuck…I Hope…

Whenever I go to Starbucks I REFUSE to order in their pretentious sizes. Fuck that. This is America. I order in 3 sizes, “Mini”, “Mid-Size” and “The Biggest One You Got Ho!!!!”.

But in all seriousness, I do often find myself having to specify that when I want a large soda at a movie theater, I mean “The gigantic sized one that’s only 50 cents more than the smaller one. NO I DON’T WANT A COMBO! I JUST WANT TO SEE MY MOVIE. SHUT UP. I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE REFILL!!!”

This article says that they (Starbucks) have finally decided to stop trying shovel their bullshit down my throat.

Quote: “In March, a scathing New York Times article reported that the chain was selling just two CDs per store per day.”

Think about that. Two CDs per store per day. Now I’m no mathematician or anything, but I’m gonna estimate that about 500 people go into each Starbucks (on average) every day (give or take). This estimate is based on nothing. But I’m just saying…

So if only 2 out of 500 people buy CD’s there per day, what does that tell us? Well, for one, maybe the PRICE POINTS WERE WAY TOO FUCKING HIGH!!! MORONS!

Really, you want me to spend $16.95 on the new KT Tunstall record? Does it have the “no no no no no no woo-hoo” song on it? NO!?!?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT WAS ON HER FIRST RECORD?!!?!? Well what songs would I know from this one? NONE OF THEM? I’LL POUR MY GRANDE MOCHA SKIM NO FAT ALL OVER YOUR FLIRTY ASS, BITCH!!!!

And so fourth…

Add in the fact that aside from the absurdly high prices these last 8 years might have been the WORST YEARS IN HISTORY TO VENTURE INTO SELLING MUSIC and the fact that Starbucks offers an EXTREMELY limited selection of CDs (OH! BUT I CAN GET THE NEW PAUL McCARTNEY ALBUM “MEMORY ALMOST FULL” FOR A MERE $17.95!! WHAT A DEAL…PS “Memory Almost Full” might be the worst title ever given to a record that wasn’t made by a 15 year old…and that photo of him? You just want to punch him in the face).

 

Turns out people DON’T go into Starbucks to shop. In spite of what I’ve been told byt he media over the last 5 years…

Also turns out the people HATE paying for music.

Strangely though, people still love to listen to music. Bizarre.

Because of how inexpensive CDs are to manufacture, they really shouldn’t cost more than $7 ever.

I realize there are obviously a lot of middlemen who need to get paid in order for the music to get from the band to the listener. Fine. Distribution costs money. Record labels need money. Record stores need money. Great.

I’m not suggesting that everyone lose their jobs. But I think it might be a good time to get out of distributing, selling and paying for bands to record music.

Just saying.

 

 

 

 

Maria Taylor

 Tonight I am seeing Maria Taylor live. This will be the second time I’ve seen her.

She has the best voice ever probably (this is subjective writing).

Anyway, its always a thrill to see her live. To date she has released two solo records, a pair with Little Red Rocket and a few with Azure Ray. I personally prefer her solo records (even though the style hasn’t changed all that much).

Her first two solo records were “11:11″ and “Lynn Teeter Flower”.

“11:11″ is a lot more spacey and computerized. “Lynn Teeter Flower” is more warm and stripped down (for the most part).

The music is always pretty ambient.

Check her out if you like Matt Pond PA, The Sundays, Azure Ray, Yo La Tengo, The Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Owen or the movie “Harold & Maude”.

 

 

 

Friday Mix Tape

1) Pleasurehead – Seafood

2) Vertigo – The Static Age

3) The Con – Tegan & Sara

4) Common People – Pulp

5) No Key, No Plan – Okkervil River

6) Regret – New Order

7) A Good Start – Maria Taylor

Kim & jessie – M83

9) O’Brien/O’Brien’s Nocturne – M. Ward

10) Hard Days 1.2.3.4 – Loney, Dear

11) Heartbeats – The Knife

12) School Boys – Headlights

13) Summer Here Kids – Grandady

14) Unforgettable Season – Cut Copy

15) Low Tide & Hospital bed – The Anniversary

16) Gold World – Aloha

NBA Wrap up.

If you want to read a long year-end Celtics/NBA post, go here. That’s like 5 hours of writing.

Live Blog Failure.

I missed last night’s Real World. Horrifying.

Thankfully MTVdoes us the service of having streaming video of all their shows available on-line. So I will probably watch it and live blog it tonight (even though it won’t technically be live).

I’m going to the Celtics paradein half and hour. Right now I have to help one of my co-workers buy Eagles tickets (the football team, not the band). Horrifying. I’m hoping Arlen Spector buys them all and scalps them.

Don’t you feel like Mike Myers should just crawl into a hole? Me too. I can almost guarantee that “The Love Guru” would be 300 times better if he wasn’t involved in it at all/it was still a comedy that just featured Justin Timberlake and Hot Chick and Midget. Probably.

Also, Mycokerewards.com, not all that rewarding.

 

Aloha Is One Of The Best Bands In America

Aloha is one of those bands I found out about when I was fifteen.

They had an EP out on Polyvinyl Records that was weird and spacey and not really like anything else I listened to. “Roanoke Born” was a standout. No one had a vibraphone in a quasi-pop band back then. You’ll have to remember, this was in 2000, back before every indie band had a string quartet and accordion player for style.

“The Great Communicators” was quickly followed by “That’s Your Fire” which featured kind of a jazz-rock feel. A lot more vibraphone. Still spacey. Sparse. But there were some great moments on the record.

“Ferocious Love” was my favorite track here.

It was around this point that I first saw Aloha live. It was at the Tap Room (I think that was what it was called) at RISD or Brown (I forget. Somewhere in the pretentious part of Providence…Just imagine a lot of sideways haircuts and nag champa scent). The show featured Matthew Gengler telling people to do flips off of the vibraphone. Most of music seemed to be highly improvisational, but not in a “WTF” (the improv group from The Real World Hollywood) kind of way, more in a “shit these guys are talented” sort of way.

A year later “Sugar” came out, which was universally hailed by Bob Nanna (you’ll have to go through the archives, but he talked about them a bit back in 2002-03) but largely seemed to be ignored by everyone else.

They didn’t really come back to Providence and then all of the sudden they stopped touring. I remember in the Spring of 2003 i went to their website (this was when all bands actually HAD WEBSITES and not just Myspace pages…I know…crazy!) and seeing it has last been updated in like July or august of 2002 and I knew that was kind of the kiss of death for bands.

Rumors sort of spread that they had separated. Which is funny because so few people actually seemed to talk about them back then, but their demise seemed like a big deal.

Anyway, the band reformed with TJ Lipple in 2003 and by 2004 actually had a new record out!

Except by that point I had forgotten about them.

Well, that’s not really true, I hadn’t forgotten, but I was in college then and doing college things (playing Mario Kart 64 non-stop, sleeping 18 hours a day, going to lots of shows, working a job in the dining hall where I hung out and talked to my friends most of the time…I miss college…). I guess they got lost in the shuffle for a while.

I didn’t pick up “Here Comes Everyone” until “Some Echoes” came out. The circumstances could not have been better either.

All though I had not completely forgotten about Aloha by 2006, I had largely stopped listening to them. “Sugar” was a great record that sort of started to fulfill the promise of “That’s Your Fire” and so I was disappointed when they ’separated’ and wasn’t sure what to expect. It was the type of thing where I would listen to them when they came up on my iPod’s shuffle or what have you, but not actually sit down and listen to any of their entire records.

Anyway, it was 2006 and Aloha was playing a show at the Middle East opening for someone really good. I could not have been happier when they started playing. They were great. Even better live, more focused and also a lot tighter (in a good way).

After the show I bought “Here Comes Everyone” and “Some Echoes” which I don’t think was actually released yet, technically.

I was blown away.

I would say that “Ice Storming” from “Some Echoes” is maybe one of my favorite songs ever. “Brace Your Face” is intense. It just generally seemed like Aloha had grown leaps and bounds in the three years since I had stepped away.

I have seen them a few times since then and they are always an absolute pleasure to experience live. Few bands have the same combination of energy and musicianship that Aloha does. Additionally, in my experience, they always seem genuinely happy just to be performing. And Matthew is always a treat to chat with at the merch tables.

And that brings us to present…

“Light Works” is a mini LP (or EP, I’ve seen both in print) that they released at the beginning of December.

For some reason I put off buying it until March or April (maybe i was hoping someone would buy it for me…like that shit ever happens).

It is maybe their best recording to date.

The first track “Body Buzz” completely pulls you in. And the whole record is strong, complete and more paired down than ever before.

Aloha just write great music. It seems baffling to me that they are not huge considering how big some similar bands have gotten (Death Cab For Cutie, Stars, Band Of Horses…etc.).

“Light Works” has also received some favorable reviews from various websites.

There is no reason why you should not listen to Aloha. They’re pretty much fantastic. I’d say one of the best bands in America right now.

So go to Polyvinyl’s web site and buy some of their records.

Real World Episode 9 Recap

I can say that this season of The Real World might be the best season ever.

A lot of people will point to San Francisco because of the Pedro storyline (which was really sort of a precursor to the show “True Life” but different on a lot of levels) or because of Puck. But San Francisco, outside of Pedro and Puck, was a relatively boring collective. It was at a time before the producers decided that everyone on the show ALSO needed to have a job (probably since sooo much of their footage for the first 6 or 7 seasons was just people sitting around in their living room). It was at a point where MTV didn’t really have a specific formula for how the seasons would work or any prototypes for who each roommate would be.

Anyway, they have those things now (for better or worse).

But this season has been absolutely explosive. I don’t know if its because they are in Hollywood or because they have gathered the ideal combination of people or what it might be. But there has been a near brawl like 5 or 6 times this season. In previous years that might have happened once and been kind of the centerpiece of the whole season. Not these days.

I would also be the first to argue that by casting by prototype or by filling quotas and by adhering to such a specific formula, the title “The Real World” has become completely absurd. The biggest problem most of the roommates have every season these days is that they drink too much and have sex with each other too much. I mean, that might be one really vapid aspect of the actual real world but it has nothing to do with the actual world.

That is why Joey’s goodbye letter last night was sort of such a punch in the gut. It was intense. It was intriguing. And it was honestly the only time in the last several years of the show that I can remember having any empathy for ANY of the roommates. It was real. Maybe even too real for “The Real World”.

But you know next week they’re gonna bring in two new roommates and the normal problems will resume (too much drinking and doing each other).

The funny thing is, each season kind of unfolds and there are clear levels of who the “Stars” of the show are and who is just kind of there. This year’s rankings?:

1) Joey (brings tension, lots of focus on him and his life. He was CLEARLY the star of the show).

2) Greg (giant asshole/show hijacker because everyone hated him. Star)

3) Brianna (They have gone into her personal life more than the other girls for sure and she causes issues)

4) Will (Lots of tension…not so much about his life at all…but he’s always on camera)

5) Sarah (whines at people and causes issues….a little bit about her family…)

6) Dave (He likes to yell and drink…but do you really know ANYTHING about him based on how the show has been cut?)

7) Kim (Kim is a COMPLETE afterthought on this season. She started that one fight with Brianna. That’s it. We know NOTHING about her life and the only times they even show her is when she’s complaining that Dave doesn’t love her. So either she has been cut to look like the worst human being ever or she is just really vapid and boring in real life.)

So the two biggest stars are gone. What happens now? They bring in a cute girl and a dude from New Rochelle. Looks promising.