Mantis Style!

Maybe ju an' me are amigos

Three new albums dropped this week that I think are worth attention. Blackaliscious' The Craft, Metric's Live it Out, and Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary. I've only had the pleasure of listening to the latter though, and I've been itching to review it.

Basically Wolf Parade has been the most hyped-up indie group ever. After making sure that every pirate in the world had a copy of their self-titled teaser EP, the buzz was just too much to contain. Even the iTunes music store was taking preorders for this debut release. Pitchfork retards consider this to be the second coming of the Velvet Underground, or Jesus even. And to be fair, the EP was pretty good. I've been looking forward to this album for a while now, albeit not with the chronic boner that others seem to have for these guys.

Well, the album's out and now we can all judge for ourselves as to it's quality. While I would say that it doesn't live up to the hype, that's not saying much. Nothing could. Jesus could float down from the clouds to approach such hype, and the gathered crowds would whisper something like "I thought he would be taller".

But it's really good. It's certainly made my list for top 10 albums of 2005. I've been thinking for two days now how to describe the fractured anthems found on this disc. I thought that I might try to make comparisons to the obvious influences of Interpol, Modest Mouse, The Watchmen, and The Unicorns, but then I thought of a much easier way:

Simply take The Arcade Fire. Give the band a bottle of ritalin, and give the lead singer a bottle of Wild Turkey. Then have Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse) produce it. That's Wolf Parade.

posted by Tay @ 3:45 AM 6 comments

In movie news, Tobey Maguire's evil twin Toper Grace has been casted to play Venom in the latest Spiderman movie. I'd just like to go on record saying that it may be a pretty cool choice. Eddie Brock was supposed to be losing everything to Peter Parker and Spiderman. I just can't see that happening with an older guy who should already have his life in order. I think it would be much more realistic if Eddie is somebody younger, trying to get his life in order, and can actually be pushed around by both Spiderman and Peter Parker.

I realize that there will be much controversy amongst the fans due to this casting choice. For fun, why don't we all pick an actor that we would like to see play Venom? I'll start: For the scariness factor, I'll choose Mickey Rourke. I think that as Venom he could scare the shit outta you.

posted by Tay @ 4:58 PM 4 comments

Wakka-chikka wakka-chikka

Let's talk about Advent Children. After having seen a majority of it (sans subtitles, unfortunatly), I can proudly say that the film exists as little more than eye-candy for fans of the original Playstation. That's not a bad thing, because as far as eye-candy and fanservice goes, this borders on the pornographic. Everything is glossy and perfect, the music is poorly edited in places, the camera angles are outrageous, and there's big hair all over the place.

Seriously though, this is some fucking beautiful shit. Following a fight scene with Tifa in the church, I had to turn to Mike to say:

"I've got wood."

The action is way to tight to catch it all in one sitting. You will need to get up to shit your pants on several occasions. I think that my favorite part of the movie is how they try to translate the game into a cinematic experience. So much cool stuff happened in the game, but given the turn-based nature of it all, it's hard to imagine how many of the spells and moves would work in a real-time setting. Also, the filmakers didn't forget that the characters are fucking indestructible. They have not forgotten that a bullet to the forhead only costs about 500 hp.

My favorite scene so far: The bahamut gangbang. But maybe now I've said too much. If you need a copy of this movie (read: you NEED a copy of this movie), I'll be burning DVDs. Get in line.

posted by Tay @ 7:26 AM 8 comments

Well, after much speculation and eyebrow-raising, Nintendo has finally revealed the controller of the new revolution". Personally, I'm impressed. Not only does it satisfy long-time Ninendo fans' need for backwards compatibility, but it also satisfies Nintendo's need to create useless peripherals and add-ons to sell to whiny children.

I'm just surprised that they were able to achieve such accuracy having a controller being monitered in 3D space, combined with a gyroscopic sensor. This is absolutely revolutionary, and more or less just what they were promising. Way to live up to the hype guys.

posted by Tay @ 2:09 AM 10 comments

Some Things

First off, the monks are making their own movie. With pirates. That should be pretty rad.

Secondly, I have a job interview tomorrow, that I'm very excited for. I may be a teller at your local CIBC, which is a pretty cool idea for me. Working bank hours would be sweet, and I'm told that men in the industry get promoted faster than John Roberts. Maybe soon I'll be able to afford that toilet seat of my dreams.

Thirdly, iTunes hates me. After having to restore my iPod for the second time in a week, it decided to permanently delete some of my favorite albums. I've been able to recover some of them, but I need your help. Here's a partial list of what I'm missing:

Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
Blueprint - 1988
De La Soul - The Grind Date
Common - Be
Hot Hot Heat - Elevator
Hot Hot Heat - Make Up The Breakdown
Hot Hot Heat - Knock Knock Knock EP
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

iTunes really hates Hot Hot Heat. Anyways, if you have any of these albums and would not mind me borrowing them for five minutes to rip them, that would be awesome. Stupid iTunes, why couldn't it delete anything crappy instead? I mean, why not just delete Mixel Pixel or The Mathletes?

I have to go now, I think Adam wants me to play wingman at The Den tonight for these girls that may or may not even go to the university, and may or may not be drinking there. He feels that this is not worth missing out on though, regardless of the odds. They must be very hot girls.

posted by Tay @ 5:06 PM 7 comments

Right, enough of this garbage. I gots pictures!



It's my room! Or the interesting corner, at least. It's very small, so I'm trying not to fill it up with crap. I'm going for a simple colour scheme, and that's pretty much it. You can see the Jon Allison print that I had done at Kinko's the other week, and it adds a splash of pink on the walls that I quite enjoy. So much so, in fact, that I've created 2 more images to hang in identical frames along the same wall. Check it out:




The tricky part now will be to find out where the original frame came from, and to paint them the same shade of white.

posted by Tay @ 3:22 AM 4 comments