the best songs you never heard, volume 1

When Todd moved here from California he brought with him an enormous CD collection. There were a whole lot of bands in those boxes I never heard of. So I started listening to them. And found some quality music. Which I’m going to share with you. In short sentences, apparently.

I’ll probably do this a couple of times a week. Even when I run out of CDs from Todd’s collection, there are a ton of new (to me) bands I found when researching these bands, or through various other places on the intertubes (like the Aurgasmic column at FTTW).

Today’s choices:

Deadbolt

They call themselves the scariest band in the world.

Imagine, if you will, a bunch of hillbillies drunk on moonshine and looking for trouble. Now imagine they have a band. With two bass players. If “Squidbillies” had a soundtrack, it would be made by this band. They call it psychobilly or voodbilly. I call it kick ass.

Try this: Dad, Why Did My Friends Explode

Conducter – Live and obviously wasted

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smoke em if you got em

As mentioned in the comments somewhere down there, yes I started smoking again.

Two and a half years of smoke-free living down the drain.

In my defense, I always go back to smoking during very stressful times in my life, and we had some definite stressful times in April when my brother in law passed away. Yea, I know, it’s almost June and that’s really no excuse.

I’ll quit again. Soon. Really. And then we can all enjoy the craziness that occurs when Michele is going through nicotine withdrawal.

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There’s A Song In My Head, Dear Liza

Ever get a song stuck in your head? Stupid question, of course you have.

Ever get a good song stuck in your head? And then you don’t have a copy of the song and you are dying to hear it and it sticks there for days and days, maybe the just the verse or a line or two? And you HAVE to hear it?

That’s what p2p is for, kids. Sue me RIAA, I don’t care. I finally got to hear the song that has been in my head for a week.

Spearhead – Hole in the Bucket

Any idea if anyone else did a version of this song?

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Do. Not. Want.

Remember back in the day on ASV when I would spend a lot of time hating on Roger Clemens? And remember when I said if he came back to the Yankees I would disown them? Well, here’s what I wrote on the FTTW blog when that disaster came to light.

Roger Clemens.

I know you’ve been wondering. I’ve mentioned several times over the past year that if the Yankees took Clemens back, I was turning in my Yankee fan badge.

I am a woman of my word.

I turned in my badge.

The guy is getting about $9,000 a pitch. He’s ancient in baseball years. I’m tired of the Yankees throwing gazillions of dollars at players for a “here and now” solution and not putting money into building a team that will be good for years to come.

I’m tired of Roger Clemens’s face and attitude. I’m tired of the Yankees “let’s buy a championship” way of doing things.

In fact, I’m tired of baseball in general. Tired of billionaire prima donnas and games that last 50 hours because of ads and “this attempted pick off brought to you by Budweiser”.

I never liked A-Rod. I never liked Clemens. I can’t sit here and root for a team that is a mockery of the class act the Yankees used to be.

You know what sucks? Clemens will retire and go into the Hall of Fame wearing a Yankee cap.

Fuck that. Fuck him. Fuck the Yankees and fuck baseball. I’m done with you. I have better
ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than falling asleep between pitches.

How many days til football season?

I titled this one:
This pretty much says it all for this season

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28 Weeks Later, A Review

First, let me say that I was never a fan of the first movie of this series, 28 Days Later. Everyone called it a zombie movie. No. Zombies are the living dead. These people are not dead. Therefore, not zombies.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s cut to the chase.

This movie SUCKED.

I know, it’s horror movie and you shouldn’t expect much from horror movies. Unless they are touted as “art house” movies that defy cinemagraphic norms.

Moving the camera around in arcs and coloring everything so that it looks like high contrast photographs run through some cheap Photoshop filter does not a good movie make.

You need suspense. You need momentum. You need me to care about what is happening. Hell, I cared more about the flat characters in Day of the Dead than I did about the people in 28 Weeks. When 20 minutes into a movie I start thinking about how much longer til I can get out of the theater and pee and smoke, you’ve got a clunker on your hands.

No amount of gore and splattered blood and exploding eyeballs could keep me interested in anything but making mental notes of the plot holes and mistakes (I mean, could you really survive a chemical weapon attack by rolling up the windows in a car and putting your shirt over your face?) or counting how many close up shots of there were of the girl’s face.

So many stories here, and none of them explained or expanded upon. It could have been good. But no, it was like sticking your hand in a box of Cracker Jacks expecting a prize and getting just an empty prize wrapper. Maybe it would have been better if there as no expectation of filling in plot lines or back stories or explanations for things like why the kid and mother were carriers (I’m assuming it had something to do with the eyes, but who knows, they never explained it). If the movie had just been another mindless, plotless gorefest, I would have been ok with it. But don’t tease me with the beginnings of some depth and then suddenly cut me off by switching back to fake scares and shaky camera action to fill the space on the reel.

I really wanted to like this movie. I liked the premise. I wanted the answer to the question that most post apocalyptic zombie-type movies make me think: what happens after? Not only did this movie NOT answer my question, it just left me with more.

Like, what the fuck was I thinking by spending money on this crap?

Now, let’s go over this zombie thing again, shall we?

Zombies are the living dead. They do not run, they lumber. They are not beings who have been infected with some virus and go crazy. They are dead. They are slow.

Accept no substitutes.

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picture post

This is Todd. I will be mentioning him a lot.

I just like that shot.

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ABV

I think I might just stay here. When I last left ASV it was for a reason; the site represented a portion of my life that I moved out of. Moving over to Faster Than The World was like breaking from that. I love FTTW, and I love what we do there, as far as gathering a bunch of great writers to make a kick ass magazine type site, but I miss the blogging portion of having a website.

The name A Small Victory fit back then. Life was a series of small victories. You take what little wins you can get sometimes.

But now. Now life is A Big Victory.

When I wake up every morning actually looking forward to the day, and gone are all the anxieties, fears, worries, anger, rage, aggression and all that other stuff that made me live in a constant state of high-strung, that’s a big victory, indeed.

I think this is it for now. I miss writing every day. I only write once a week at FTTW, if that. I miss just writing about the little things. I miss, to use the greatest blogging cliche, writing for me. And I’ve been dying to write about those big victories.

So welcome to ABV.

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temporary home

This is where I’ll be until I have the time to reformat a small victory (with the name change).

I have very little spare time now.

Which is a good thing in this case.

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