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Saturday 1 September 2007

Now here's a little story I've got to tell about three bad brothers you know so well

Electric Picnic 2007 is currently underway with Beastie Boys one of the festival's headliners. They're up there as one of the top 5 acts I'd love to see perform live as well as Ben Folds, Oasis, Muse and Kanye West (again). It's a shame nobody would go with me. My friends' excuses generally involve being too cheap or lack any taste music. Some just fear I'm a bit too touchy feely in tents. I've collected some of the best videos on Youtube which is what I'm good at.

Great live performances:
-Brass Monkey (Madison Square Garden)
-Ch-Check It Out (Late Night With Letterman)
-Intergalactic/ Sabotage (Glasgow)
-Intergalactic/ Sabotage (Futurama)
-Radio Radio (Saturday Night Live)
-So Watc'cha Want (Madison Square Garden)
-Sure Shot & Root Down (Madison Square Garden)

Some hilariously bad live performances:
Fight For Your Right To Party (Joan Rivers Show)
Rare 1983 Highschool Punk Band Performance

The Beastie Boys: Solid Gold Hits in video form:
So What'cha Want
Brass Monkey
Ch- Check It Out
No Sleep Til Brooklyn
Hey Ladies
3 mc's And one DJ
Pass the Mic
An Open Letter to NYC
Root Down
Shake Your Rump
Intergalactic
Sure Shot
Body Movin' (Fatboy Slim remix)
Triple Trouble
Sabotage
(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)

The Madison Square concert DVD "Awesome: I Fuckin Shot That" is available on Amazon and is well worth it.

Friday 31 August 2007

This makes me want to punch a T-Rex in the face

The Red Ring Of Death visited me today. Yippee. I'm not that fond of sending my X-Box 360 off to Germany for a month while I wait pointlessly in a queue on September 26th for Halo 3- the game the 360 was made for. I'm tempted to give the wonky one away and buy the new 360 Elite which is so much cooler. Because it's black, you see.

There's a crazy ad campaign for the game to reach new audiences in Korea. What the Koreans apparently want is Master Chief fighting a dinosaur.


I haven't started packing the 360 yet and I already miss it. Waiting is not my forté. At least I don't have to wait for Kanye West's new album. It's leaked onto all of the internets and into my ears. It's very good and growing on me by the second. But this is coming from a huge Kanyeezee fan so I may be a tad biased.

Favourites so far on limited listening: "Good Life", "Drunk And Hot Girls (feat Mos Def)" and "Homecoming (feat Chris Martin)". At least there aren't any silly skits this time around. Let's see what kind of magic trick 50 Cent can pull out of his arse to save his music career now and beat this...

Thursday 30 August 2007

Look at him standing there... like Rory Calhoun.

Here's Antony Gormley's latest proposed project in Dublin. I think it looks awesome. Well, as far as I can see, it looks pretty amazing with the backdrop pictured below though I'm not that familiar with Dublin so I'm not sure if it looks this good from different angles. Maybe there's an Aldi beside it or you can see factories through it, I don't know.

Some would say it would look better without the statue and that the money should be used for education and health in the country. That's a fair point, but in the picture below you can see how boring this view really is.

It looks like it's missing a giant wire statue, wouldn't you say? I can't say I care for the fact the statue is modelled on Antony Gormley himself. Maybe a statue of someone else would be nice. Someone who isn't so self-obsessed. Like Bono... Or maybe Gay Byrne.

I think it would look better if was Batman looking over Dublin city instead. He could have lasers for eyes and speakers so it could say "Hello, I'm Batman. The time is now 9 p.m. This message was brought to you by Today FM". I made up this picture in (clearly) very little time:

Here's some examples of Antony Gormley's other work in video form with casts of himself placed in many places which proves that he's in love with himself:

-The Gateshead Angel Of The North
-Another Place
-Blind Light

When reading up on Antony Gormley, I thought that this man was nuts; he's crazy in the coconut which led me on to this amazing tune that time forgot by Avalanche: "Frontier Psychiatry":

Wednesday 29 August 2007

Alea iacta est

I've been playing a game based on Risk called LandGrab. Here's the summary:

LandGrab is a turn-based game for two to six players, and is played on a board depicting a stylised Napoleonic-era political map of the Earth, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. Players control armies, with which they attempt to capture territories from other players. The goal of the game is to control all the territories—or "conquer the world"—through the elimination of the other players. Using area movement, LandGrab ignores realistic limitations, such as the vast size of the world, and the logistics of long campaigns. Compared to other military board games, Landgrab is relatively simple and abstract.

You can play the game online over a long period of time between many people with email reminders sent to you telling you when it's your go. It also has a public or private messaging system for taunting/ commentating and scheming.

Play it here.

On a totally different subject, check out Rapture Ponies' discovery of Cat Face. He's got the body of a cat, and the face of a cat. Brilliant. It's something I'd like to think I've invented before but, like most funny things, Simpsons did it first.

Tuesday 28 August 2007

The Bourne Ultimatum

Matt Damon as Jason Bourne (Discus out of shot)

I didn't know this film had prequels?! There I was, minding my own business in the local movie theatre, assuming the film was about a man (played by newcomer Matt Damon) who walks into his boss' office and threatens to quit unless he gets a pay rise. Hilarity ensues.

I'm a huge fan of the series. I read the books years ago but luckily couldn't remember them so the plot twists came as a surprise. Car chases aren't that good in books anyways. "He drives really fast, and looks in his mirror. The man he is chasing is driving ahead of him, equally fast, and takes a left turn. They drive really fast. Car crashes into pavement. Hilarity ensues."

The difference between this kind of action film and something along the lines of Transformers, Spiderman and Die Hard 4.0, is that you actually care about what happens to the people involved. You see people die. In other films, and I'm not pointing fingers here, robots crashing into huge abandoned buildings, the childhood sweetheart being tied up in a giant web or serious traffic jams with no computer.

I'd definitely watch this film again to see the great fight sequences in slow motion when it comes to HD DVD like the two others. This movie was a perfect action movie. It had me on the edge of my seat. It actually had me all over my seat because the seats in the Galway Eye Cinema are so uncomfortable and I suffer from a condition called Arsenumbitis. Oh, and it's much funnier than Transformers.

I apologize that I'm relatively slow at reviewing a new movie and much less articulate than others so I'm sorry for that. If you've seen the movie, then I'd recommend watching the following trailer. Personally, I always try avoiding trailers for movies I know I'll watch anyways because they always reveal all but the last two minutes of the the story and show off the best stunts/ jokes:



Matt Damon's good buddy, Jimmy Kimmel has an alternative version:

Monday 27 August 2007

Liverpool Watch: Sunderland

I found the extended highlights on DivShare because of the same problem as last week where Youtube clips are taken down by ninja-type lawyers. I'd only recommend playing the clip if you've got broadband.



I've also found a cool one-hour video called "Fowler's Hot 100" as seen here on Amazon. There are a lot of great goals there and they're during my favourite Liverpool era with the "Spice Boys" and all that starting up. McManaman says in the follwing video "I think he's jusy like um unbeliveably lucky in the box and every one of them have just bounced off his knee and gone in". I'm sure that's not totally true...



Tomorrow will be 13 years to the day since Fowler scored a hat-trick against Arsenal:

Sunday 26 August 2007

Song of the week 8

Here's a weekly post to let me get my sleep on and not worry about what I'm posting. Click here for the previous instalments. This week, I've been mostly listening to KT Tunstall's "Hold On". Here's the video:

Had it not been for a crappy cameraman and a lack of particapation from the special guests, I would've posted a song from NYC's Screamfest '07 with T.I. and Ciara. What made it special are the cameos from Jay-Z, Sean Combs, Kanye West and 50 Cent.

Here's some shaky-cam footage of Kanye performing "Can't Tell Me Nothin" from his upcoming album "Graduation" that will soon end Fiddy's career (hopefully). MTV break down the evening's events here.