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7/2/2003
EAR PLUGS
Latino-flavored band Mandorico are calling it quits after 8 somewhat
successful years. They're doing a final tour this summer, returning
to the southeast this fall for their last shows and selling their
last pressing of their CD's. Check out http://www.mandorico.com for
info.
We finally go around to uloading a bunch of photos from recent shows
like Bubbapalooza, a Kingsized show from a while back Corndogorama
and more:
http://www.degeneratepress.com/earplugs/gallery/
Speaking of Corndogorama, check out the illustrated review: http://www.degeneratepress.com/earplugs/archive/corndogorama_2003/index.html
INDEPENDENT DAY WEEKEND
We found out Mini-KISS don't actually play their own instruments.
Apparently their stubby little fingers can't get around the neck of a
guitar, so they do KISS tunes karaoke style. Midgets in makeup doing
karaoke KISS ain't exactly the same as a full on tribute band, just
thought you ought to know.
If you prefer your performance art fully live, check out the Georgia
Shakespeare Festival this summer. They do some fun stuff and have a
new theater at Oglethorpe University. Details online at
http://www.gashakespeare.org
FILM FLAM
We got free passes to a preview of Terminator 3, The Rise of the
Machines on Monday and struggled through a rainy rush hour traffic
jam to get to the theater on time. (Goddamn, will it EVER stop
raining?)
I was glad to see the film, and glad I didn't have to pay. I feel
guilty giving money to people or institutions that oppose my leftist
leanings, but I sure love the Terminator series. The first film blew
me away back in '84. It had the cold, unstoppable killer of the
Friday the 13th/Halloween flavor, combined with the action of a smash
'em up car chase movie, with a little sci-fi thrown in.
Terminator 2 pushed the special effects envelope in 1991 and changed
the cold killing machine into... well, a cold killing machine on the
good guys' side. And the jokes were funnier.
Now T3 has Arnold in the same role, cold killing machine on the good
guys' side, battling against another cold killing machine played by
Kristanna Loken, an all-but-unknown actress who has little to do but
strut around and let the guns, special effects and spectacular car
crashes do the talking. Which is perfect, because it's all you expect
from this film.
You might think from the ads that some of this film is going to take
place in the dark, post-apocalyptic future we've seen glimpses of in
the previous films. But no, the ads show almost all of that footage
from T3. Instead, it takes place entirely in the present day with a
plot very similar to T2 - Arnold defending John Conner, now played by
the mostly unknown Nick Stahl, against a later model Terminator,
driving around smashing up trucks and buildings and such. Instead of
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Conner, we get Claire Danes as Kate Brewster,
John Conner's future wife and the daughter of an Air Force general
who is responsible for starting up Skynet, the artificial
intelligence system that takes over the world's machines and starts
the war. It's pretty much just one long chase scene with guns
blazing, with a few stops for clever one-liners and bathroom breaks.
This is what you wish Grand Theft Auto was like. Pure spectacle worth
seeing!
And it wraps up in a segue for T4, which must take place in the
post-apocalyptic future a lot of us want to see (on film, if not in
reality.) Let's hope it doesn't take them 10 years to get around to
it, though I fear it may since Schwarzenegger is likely to end up
Governor of California and they seem resistant to making a Terminator
film without him.
BLASPHEMY
"If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?"
I've seen the bumper sticker before, but I think this is the first
news story of this nature in, oh, 100 years?
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/06/30/supermarket.killings.ap/index.html
In other news, I have yet to see stronger evidence that we didn't
really go to Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction:
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar,
with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the
niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where
are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad
proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in charge of finding
WMD?" Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to
his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it
wasn't his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in
charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone
volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to
Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.
From Time online:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030707-461781,00.html?cnn=yes
Seriously, if the President goes to war because of WMD's you'd think
he'd KNOW who's in charge of looking for them after the fact. But
hey, nobody really believes we went to war over this, do we?
As more and more evidence of Saddam's Stalinesque dictatorship
arises, I'm still convinced we did the right thing. It's just too bad
we don't have an administration that would go for the right reason,
or even admit after the fact what they're real reasons are.
But then again American voters haven't been interested in truth in a
long time, so why start now?
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