zrath

Today's Jean Michel Jarre concert in Monaco for the Royal Wedding there.
The first 7 minutes of video are a test tone, so just skip over it.
Then it's the dulcet tones of "Waiting For Cousteau" (fractal music)
until JMJ arrives by boat at around 26 minutes in. Then it's PARTY TIME! :D




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Dang, I'm just unstoppable today.
Here's a nice, short little bit of Netflixing.
Only three titles this time.


Hellboy: Blood And Iron - "Lady, I was going to cut you some slack because you're a major mythological figure..."
This is the second Hellboy OVA and I daresay it's much better than the first one, which was good but okay.
Professor Broom is in this one and the narrative alternates between present-day and the Professor's very first assignment.
I don't want to say anymore because of the way the story is set up, but I will say one thing: if the sight of blood makes
you uneasy, even if it's animated blood, you REALLY don't want to rent this one. It's called "Blood And Iron" for a reason.
Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones and John Hurt reprise their roles from the film, with an assortment of cartoon voice
regulars filling out the rest of the cast (Cree Summer, Rob Paulsen, Jim Cummings, Kath Souci).
The writing is solid and the story structure is interesting.
I watched this Sunday Night with Warren "Whisky" No-LJ and we had a great time.
Worth renting and worth owning.

Blood And Chocolate - aka "Werewolves In Luuuuuuuuv"
So this is kinda like "Underworld", except there are no vampires and there's a lot less gunplay.
It's romantic and schmaltzy and I guess it's a date movie. In Bucharest, or is it Budapest, there's this beautiful girl
who is a werewolf and works in a chocolaterie. She meets an American graphic novel artist who happens to be
researching werewolves for his next book. He is very persistent and she begins to fall for him.
But the Pack is not happy about this, and there's some politics and power struggles and things go bad.
It's an unremarkable film thankfully devoid of excessive gore and nastiness. The weres go from human to wolf really fast
and with a minimum of weird body-transformation, so don't go expecting "An American Werewolf In London".
Overall, it's rather blah, and only for hopeless romantics with low expectations.

Music And Lyrics - Remember the '80s? You will!!
A romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, this turned out to be a lot funnier than we expected.
Yes, I watched this one with the Sibling last night, and we were both laughing a lot.
Hugh Grant plays the unsuccessfull half of a Wham-style '80s duo who suddenly gets tapped to write a song for Cora,
the ruling Queen Of Pop, a little-girl-faced artist patterned after Britney and the other interchangeable pop bimbos.
He's a lousy songwriter and has no idea how he's going to pull it off. In this modern age, he's lucky to get the occasional
theme park gig, so this is his chance to get out of the hole that his career has turned into and bounce back.
Into his life stumbles Drew Barrymore, playing a geeky ditzy dame with a natural talent for songwriting.
Hugh has to chase her down and almost tie her to a chair to get her to cooperate. And, urrrr, she likes it. :)
The writing is very enjoyable, with Hugh delivering some devastatingly funny lines in a very English sort of wryness.
Drew is bubbly and neurotic and reminds me of several people I know.
Sample funny dialogue:
Hugh - "The best time I've had in the last fifteen years was sitting at that piano with you."
Drew - "That's wonderfully sensitive... Especially from a man who wears such tight pants."
Hugh - "It forces all the blood to my heart."
Supporting cast includes the very tall and funny Brad Garrett as Hugh's agent, and the almost as tall and no less funny
Kristen Johnston ("3rd Rock From The Sun") as Drew's older sister who happens to worship Hugh's character.
If you grew up in the '80s and watched MTV religiously, you will find this even funnier than most.
A friend told me that Martin Fry of ABC (the pop group) had advised Hugh Grant on '80s dancing and singing,
but his name did not appear anywhere in the credits and he is not mentioned in the making of. Hmmmmmmm...
Okay-okay, one last bit of sample dialogue:
Hugh, singing - "Sleeping with a clown above my bed..."
Hugh, speaking - "'Clown' is not right."
Drew - "That's 'cloud'. Why would you put a clown in your bed?"
Hugh - "It would not be the first time."
As you can see, I really liked this movie. :)
So go rent it! NOW! I'll wait... :D

Link ganked from cleolinda:

Someone found a way to turn tesla coil discharges into music!

OMGWTFSOCOOL!!!

There was a weekend, and it was tiring.
On Saturday, the sibling and I went to the storage unit to begin Operation Storage 2Step.
The rent on the unit keeps going up and up, and I was looking at $450 for the month of April for my 10x20.
Since I couldn't actually stop the insanity, I decided to downsize it.
I reserved a 10x15 on the same floor as my current unit and 7 hours were spent getting everything moved over.
We threw out a few things and reorganized everything. And I got a deal on the new unit on top of the smaller rent.
When it was all finished, we dragged ourselves to the In-N-Out for celebratory Double-Doubles, fries and drinks.
Then we just limped home and went to bed. Except the sibling wanted to watch "Eragon". Not cool. I wanted to sleep.
Eventually, he gave up and sleep was possible.

On Sunday, we retrieved my bicycle from the bike shop then went clothes-shopping.
I purchased a much-needed pair of pants and got a couple of Cubavera Cuban-style short-sleeved shirts, on sale!
I wore the shirts yesterday and today at work and got a couple of compliments. :)
There may be photos later on, if I'm feeling particularly sadistic. >:)
After that, it was time to grocer-shop at Trader Crack's, I mean Joe's.
Then we went home, did 5 loads of laundry, and watched "Eragon" all the way through. El Hermano likes dragon movies.
As we watched, I keep seeing scenes from "Star Wars" in my mind. (That's "Episode IV: A New Hope" for you young 'uns)
"Run Princess, run!" - "Oh crap, Darth Vader's gonna git ya!" - "What, no lightsaber?" - "Are you Obi-Wan Kenobi?"
To be fair, many of these plot devices were already old when George Lucas used them in his magnum opus.
But holy crap, there were also bits of "Lord Of The Rings" and "Harry Potter" in there. Not much "Potter" though.
The dragon is purty though, and voiced by Rachel Weisz (muuuuurrrrrr...)
And ultimately, this is what makes this film popular: purty dwagin!
I wonder how much the sequel will be like "Empire Strikes Back"...

On Monday, it was back to work.
A colleague was bitten by a Giant Gummi Cola Bottle and was compelled to order a 5-pound bag. He had it 2-day-aired.
For some reason, the gummi are softer and smell slightly different than the bag I ordered.
I wonder if the high altitude is to blame...

Hey, Matt LeBlanc just walked by here at work, looking a bit scruffy. His hair is salt and pepper.
I should have saluted him. (He played "Major West" in "Lost In Space". No, I never watched "Friends")
I wonder if he's gonna be sporting an Amp'd Mobile phone from now on. :)

Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah, air-freight gummi. So yeah, possible softening due to high altitude transit. How odd.

On Tuesday, which is today, hmmmmm, nothing much.
I got some promo stuff for my sibling and some of the artists he works with. It was pretty hard.
On my lunch hour, I went to House Of Records on Pico (across the street for the Grammy offices).
The store is going out of business. Nothing has been reduced yet but it won't be long now.
House Of Records is full of CDs, DVDs, LPs, cassettes, and even a few laserdiscs.
I found a couple of used CDs to my liking: "Baby Monkey" by Voodoo Child and "Mainhatten Sound" by John Acquaviva.
The first one is an old-fashioned Techno dance album by Moby from 2003, under his Voodoo Child moniker. It's fun!
He was inspired to make it after attending an underground party near Glasgow on the last date of the "18" European tour.
The DJs played "hard, sexy, straightforward dance music" and he was reminded how much he liked that. So he made some!
I previewed the album on Urge and added it to my list of CDs to buy.
The second is a mix CD by long-time business associate and friend of Richie Hawtin (aka Plastikman): John Acquaviva.
The CD contains nothing but tracks from the Frankfurt-based Force Inc. label, and the style is minimalist Techno-House.
It's a nice one to bop to while working on stuff. It's from 2001.

And now, time for to go home!
Have a good evening.