Why The Spectacular Spider -Man is so awesome

Cursed

That right guys, I've been cursed. I can't recall any recent encounters with crazy old women, so I'm clueless on possible causes at this point.
This curse has really put me out of commision for the past few weeks though. Straight from shocking audition failure to the pain of wisdom teeth removal directly followed by the joyful experience of tonsillitis where it too much to drink water (next time I'm going to see a doctor much, much sooner by the way) and then onto car troubles resulting in my vehicle being out of commision for at least a couple weeks. So yeah, food isn't such a problem any more, but getting too and from school suddenly is...

INFAMY OF INFAMIES!!

CAN THIS BE THE END

OF OUR BELOVED

CRUSADER??

WILL BRENT

WAX SERIOUS?

FOR THE SAKE

OF OUR HERO,

LET'S THINK POSITIVELY!!!

BUT IT LOOKS BAD,

VERY BAD!

HOW CAN WE WAIT

UNTIL NEXT TIME..

SAME BRENT-TIME...

SAME BRENT-CHANNEL!!?

Smallville, you suck.

This summer I took on the challenge of catching up on the long running TV series, Smallville. I had never watched it before, but it's about Superman. SUPERMAN. He's fucking awesome. Anyway, the series started off pretty shitty but eventually got better, to what I thought was "good" but I'm starting to have second thoughts. The only way I can explain it is I'd been exposed to so many terrible episodes that by the time it got decent it seemed fantastic in comparison.

About a week ago I finished watching Justice League for probably the 7th time, and now as I'm finishing up Superman the Animated Series I've arrived on "Superman's Pal," an episode about little Jimmy Olsen and I'm reminded again of how incredibly stupid Smallville is.

Smallville Season 8 spoilers by the way. Like, season finale style spoilers.

I'm not gonna go into detail here, but at the end of the season Jimmy Olsen has relationship problems which leads to him developing a drug addiction, that he gets over a couple episodes later, and in the following episode (season finale) he ends up being murdered by a jealous super villain who is competing with him for a girl.

Let's go over this again:
Little Jimmy Olsen
develops a drug addiction
and is then MURDERED
by a super villain.

Oh, and guess who does it? Who's the jealous super villain who's fighting over a girl with little Jimmy Olsen? You wanna know, right?

DOOMSDAY

Now that the shock is residing, I should probably clear up that it wasn't technically Doomsday, but more so the Jekyll to his Hyde. See, on Smallville they feel the need to completely ruin villains for some reason, so Doomsday actually changes between two people, one who is a normal human, a paramedic in fact, and well, Doomsday. Oh, he's also the son of Zod for some fucked up reason, came to earth in the same meteor shower as Clark Kent but without a ship somehow. ANYWAY, Clark refuses to defeat Doomsday because his other half is a good guy, so he does something fancy to split them apart and the human dude is the one who kills Jimmy. Kinda smart in a way, but also pretty damn ridiculous.

I was listening to the commentary on an episode of Superman and Bruce Timm (producer, writer, artist for the DC Animated Universe) said when he told DC he wanted to kill a character in Superman and suggested Jonathan Kent they told him he could do it as long as they bring him back.
Sure, it was 10 years ago, but why the hell does the far superior show get restricted on these kinds of things? Smallville killed JIMMY OLSEN and they will not be bringing him back (oh, Jonathan Kent died in season 5 by the way).

When I think back on how terrible the first few seasons are I wonder why DC ever let this show continue. Then I remember that they are owned by a larger corporation who loves to cash in on Superman, stupid teenagers and generally anyone with horrible taste.

Bedouin Soundclash Part 2: Hippie Jam Bands are Stupid.

Sunday morning at the Regina Folk Fest had a workshop called Get a move on: Fat beats and funky rhythms with Socalled (host), Bedouin Soundclash, Pacifika. I had no idea what it was going to be, but it turned out to be a bunch of members from different bands jamming for an hour. There was a couple bass players, an accordion player, fiddle, trumpet, saxophone, a couple female singers, and of course, Jay, the singer/guitarist of Bedouin Soundclash.

They turn on a drum machine and everyone kinda jams around that. It was kinda cool for a bit, but after about 40 minutes I realized how incredibly dumb it is and was reminded why my band doesn't do any live jams. It is just way too dull and unstructured to be very entertaining for anyone but the people doing it.

And then there's Jay Malinowski again. Here's the thing about Jay: he doesn't really jam out or do any crazy guitar solos. Maybe it's because he's from a band that doesn't suck, or maybe because he's not that kind of guitar player, who knows. Throughout the first jam, which lasted about 40 minutes, he mostly threw in some cool rythym guitar parts every once in a while and a couple neat vocal skats. For a good portion of it he actually sat down and had a cigarette. After that jam was over, he took over the microphone and started singing Amazing Grace (it was Sunday morning after all). The band jammed over that for a bit, then that one kinda ended and again Jay started up a song. This time it was Can't Hurry Love, and it was fantastic. Again, the whole band jammed over it and it was very well received. The audience clearly had a much better reaction to the last couple songs than anything else they did. I wish they had done that kind of thing for the whole hour instead of spending the first 40 minutes masturbating in front of a crowd.

I'm finally getting to see them in concert on Tuesday. Last time I saw them I wasn't really familiar with their songs, and it was still awesome, so I'm really excited for this concert. Expect a review of that later. Check out part 1 here.

Bedouin Soundclash Part 1

Bedouin Soundclash is playing the Regina Folk Festival this weekend and while I wasn't able to catch their full performance tonight I was able to catch something else they were a part of this afternoon. First of all, I gotta say that never have I seen so many hippies. I must have seen 50 people carrying around long boards. Anyway, on one of the side stages was a "workshop" entitled Nico on the Night Train: Travel Songs Hosted by Bedouin Soundlcash. It turned out just be the singer from Bedouin, Jay Malinowski, and members of three other bands taking turns playing travel songs on acoustic guitar. Surprisingly, Nico on the Night Train was not one of the songs played.

This one hour session was, for the most part, actually quite boring. Jay's songs were clearly the highlight, and he wasn't even playing songs the audience knew. The first song he played was called Life is a Gun and I found it quite catchy. The second was called Narceritos, which is what they call the smugglers who bring drugs up from Central America to Vancouver, and it was about a friend of his in Vancouver who either uses or works at a safe house for shooting up. Both were totally new songs, and the bass player informed me they were from Jay's upcoming solo record. You can listen to demos of them on his myspace. Definitely on the top of my anticipated albums now. He finished up the set with 12:59 Lullaby, one of Bedouin's hit singles.

Tomorrow I'm off to another "workshop" called Get a move on: Fat beats and funky rhythms with Socalled (host), Bedouin Soundclash, Pacifika. Who knows what this one will turn out to be, but it better be funky. Tuesday night I will of course be seeing them in Medicine Hat. Expect blog posts about both.

Resurrection

It has been brought to my attention that I haven't made a post in just about forever. The truth is I have a handfull of drafts for posts that I just didn't end up finishing. I had a post about Smallville, one where I bitched about Reel Big Fish DVD, fair rides, and other crazy topics. They were supposed to be long and detailed, but screw it. Here's two months of half assed blog posts summarized into a a paragraph each:

Smallville

Seasons 1-4 really sucked, 5 was kinda good and 6 was awesome. I have no idea how it ended up lasting so long but I'm glad it gets better. Earlier seasons mostly just deal with kryptonite mutants with stupid powers, and the episodes suffer from way too ridiculous/cheesy teen plots. Favourites include: Clark Kent runs for class president; Clark Kent uses x-ray vision to see into girl's locker room; Clark Kent has a drunken, spur of the moment wedding in Las Vegas; Clark Kent does red kryptonite, starts acting rebelious, becomes distant from his friends and spends a lot on his parents credit card; the entire cheerleading team uses kryptonite combined with their superior knowledge of chemisty to create a love potion.

The Lawrence Arms

Are back. Apparently Brendan Kelly reads my blog and I convinced him that the band should do some recording (that's the story I'm sticking with). They went into the studio and recorded a 5 song EP, to be released on a 7" vinyl record. I'm stoked.

Reel Big Fish

Quit making DVDs already. They just released their third live DVD, with their previous ones only being released in 2003 then 2006. They've only really done a half-bsides album and a cover album since the last one, and over half the song list on this one appears on the other DVDs. Some of the new songs I don't really give a damn about either, for instance most of the four cover songs on the DVD. MAKE AN ALL NEW ALBUM.

Exhibition

Did some rides, got ripped off on mini-donuts (whatever happened to 3 bags for $5?), and missed MC Hammer. I'm crazy, I know.

Eternal Sontata

I've been putting off buying this game for such a long time and now I've finally done it. For the uninformed, Eternal Sonata is an RPG on Xbox 360 and PS3 about a dream world that exists within the pianist Chopin's head while he's on his deathbed. Graphics and sound are amazing, probably the best I've ever seen, and the battle system is pretty cool but UNFORTUNATELY it suffers from a few issues. First of all, it has these awesome dungeons that are just huge, but there's only ever two different enemies in them. The battle system is pretty cool and original, but because there's only two enemies you basically figure out one strategy for battle once you get into the dungeon and then the rest of the battles get really repetitive. There's also a lot of cheesy dialogue and directing issues. The game is still pretty good, but it bothers me when a game gets a lot going for it in some ways then really screws up in others. Only about 15 hours in, maybe expect more on this in the future.

Madworld
Is awesome

The Red Shells

Have done a lot of recording and we've got a show next week. I bought a distortion pedal yesterday and it really beefs up half our songs. I am fucking stoked.

Next week

Is gonna be ridiculous. Tuesday afternoon I go to Medicine Hat (4 hours away) for the Bedouin Soundclash concert. I was gonna see them here this weekend but I had previous plans. After that concert, we continue on to Calgary (another couple hours) for Warped Tour the next day. Many of my favourite bands are playing it this year (Less Than Jake, NOFX, Streetlight Manifesto, Westbound Train) and a few others I'd like to see (Bad Religion, Big D and the Kids Table, TAT). It's gonna be one long, tiring day and then we head back here as soon as it's over because our show is the following day at noon. Yay.

E3 Day Three: Shut Up, Square.

The big press conferences are done but there's still a bunch of smaller announcements going on and games to be shown off on the show floor.  

Square Enix held a press conference today for the newest entry in the main Final Fantasy series, the long awaited Final Fantasy XIV (Yeah, again, XIII isn't even out yet.  They're getting way too ahead of themselves).  Almost every single question was about Final Fantasy XI.  Will XI be discontinued now? How will the games be similar? Will data be transferable between the two titles? I DON'T CARE!!! I really, really dislike MMOs.  They're tedious, dull, and they offer little reward for the time they require. 

I'm still mad at Square Enix for other things anyway.  For anyone who remembers the Crimson Echoes fiasco from a few weeks ago, we've finally been updated on the subject.  Apparently the creators of the fan project spoke with the legal team at Square Enix and the company agreed to issue a public statement about it.  You know, like "sorry guys, we appreciate the fan's continued interest in the series but we have to protect our intellectual property" but instead Square Enix just kinda... backed out after sitting on it for a few weeks.  You can read all about it at chronocompendium.com if you like.  Jerks.  Quit whining about fans making sequels to your games and just do it yourselves already.

And that brings me finally to Final Fantasy XIII which apparently had a four minute demo today that included some sort of lesbian shiva motorcycle thing.  I don't know, I wasn't there guys.  Read about it here. 

In Castlevania news, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is working on the latest title in the series.  Finally, Castlevania will become the 20 hour long movie that we've always wanted it to be. 

You heard/read correctly.  Patrick FUCKING Stewart.