Sometimes you just gotta slap a bitch. We’ve all been there, bro. One time I had to go Ike Turner on my xbox controller after I caught her messin’ around with Master Chief in the middle of the night. But unfortunately, you never really know what you have in a relationship until it’s gone or you’ve otherwise smashed the shit out of it against your drywall. All relationships are hard, especially those with the added strain of pwning newbs and breaking high scores.
Nerds! Come together! The greatest news since the Real Girl was invented. Sam Raimi set to direct World of Warcraft movie for Legendary Pictures! That’s right, the same guy behind every one of those Anchor Bay Evil Dead sucker box sets that you buy every time a new limited edition Necronomicon-looking DVD comes out and the Spider Man movies is going to direct the reason you still live in a basement.
Also, something I found while googling Sam Raimi:
Look at this piece of shit! Nothing worse than tattoos that like, burst through your skin or fire that is eating its way out of your body, but this just makes NO sense at all. It’s not like Peter Parker had to take off his Peter Parker suit to reveal his Spider Man colored flesh… IT’S A FUCKING SUIT! Please tell us this comes off for when you want to attempt to have sex with someone.
So, mapping brain waves could lead to the diagnosing of ADHD and more effective stroke treatments. Betterment of man. Altruism. Yawn.
In more exciting EEG news, DARPA has budgeted $4 million for similar research. But the goal of their program (dubbed ‘Silent Talk’)? Mental telepathy on the battlefield. Duh. I’ve never been more FOR a Defense Department program in all my life. Just think of the possibilities beyond the military uses. No more boring conversations. No More bad poetry. No more having to buy dynamite when you want to blow something up because, of course, telepathy leads to telekinesis. It’s so beautiful I want to cry. It’s like the opposite of Orwell. It’s Llewro and I like it.
I feel like a sports fan jumping up and down when that t-shirt cannon comes out. I wish I could be more eloquent about it but all I can think to say is “I want that” over and over again. In short:
Dear, Pentagon. One telekinesis, please. Thank you.
www.thetyser.com
Actually speaking to other people is kind of out dated. This is how our Chief family has begun to communicate with one another and it’s working out well. It’s so easy to misunderstand text messages and IMs, and you know how some people just hate talking on the phone. We think everyone else should adopt this method of communication.
Directed by Marc Webb
Grade: 4/10 Machetes
My pussy friend Matt and I recount eachother’s greatest “nope”s. Like one time I was walking down the street and I saw one of those clipboard assholes marching toward me, you know, one of those people who work for a “cause.” One of those was coming right at me and I got my “nope” all ready, like I unholstered it and was rehearsing it in my head. I was just so set to be all, “Fuck Yer Cause!” with my single nope. So here she comes and she gets to me and I take the safety off and I’m ready to the let this shit go and she asks, “Do you have one minute for gay rights?”
“Nope!” and I put my hand up by her face before she says anything else. Damn, that was a good one AND what a tricky fucking question! Because no matter what, if you don’t stop you are the biggest asshole in the world. Therefore Justin = Biggest Asshole In The World.
I noped the shit out of this movie. Like 500 times. It had me a little bit with it’s cute gimmicks and Zooey’s eyes and the fact that they reference music that I like and then I was all, “I hate everything that I like, especially other people who like the things that I like.”
Here are some of the 500 nopes of this bleeding nutsack of a movie:
143 – Nobody better ever sing “Train In Vain” at karaoke. I would strangle you with the mic cord and summon the ghost of Joe Strummer to gob in your mouth.
98 – Jerry Maguire-esque freak out scene at job that pays you way too much so you just fucking deal with it.
452 – It smelled like fucking tampons in the theater. And I’m not just saying that because it’s an insanely funny thing to say, like, “This was such a shitty chick flick that the reels came smelling like menses.” NO, this was such a shitty chick flick that it put every woman in the theater on the same cycle. There were basically blood clots hitting the ceiling.
33 – TWEEEEEEE!
257 – No more interacting with narration, okay?
99 – No more chicks who just want “something casual” and “to have fun because we’re young.” Women don’t need any more role models of how to be shitty, Sex and the City did enough irrevocable damage to intersex relations.
500 – FUCK THE END OF THIS MOVIE I THINK I RUPTURED A LIVER IT SUCKED SO HARD!
Like how I did that? How I cut back and forth between nopes. I totally learned that in advertising school.
We were going to try to have like a nice little Chief Top-However-Many list of cool things, ya know, like “Chief’s Top 7 Shuttle Explosions,” or whatever. There was going to be a voting system devised and made all democratic until we were like, “How about Best Horror Movies?” and then people just started getting punched. And with the amount of weaponry around this place it was just a matter of time before Dan was holding my head against the wall with a machete to my throat yelling, “Dawn of the Dead, MUTHERFUCKER!” It got pretty intense. That’s why I used the same ace up my sleeve I’ve used to get everything I’ve ever wanted in life: I started crying so I could have my own list.
The only democratic thing that did happen around here was that everyone else agreed that Dan and I should settle our disputes via the blog instead of with inter-office fisticuffs and deathmatch rounds of Soggy Biscuit. And it worked so here ya go.
In no particular order, Justin’s Best List of Horror Movies of All Times and Ever (Better than Dan’s fer sure)!
Until you see this you are basically like stem cells to me: you might be useful for something but I don’t care to find out what. Shut the fuck up and watch this as soon as midnight rolls around.
Let’s see… blood pouring out of elevators?
Check.
Okay, look’s good… hmmm, uh okay, dead children?
Double check. I mean, twins. I mean, axes and twins. I mean, check.
Great. Let’s see… how about creepy beaver mask guy going down on guy in a suit towards the end there?
Oh yeah. Check. Big time.
How about… this is getting tough, they got everything, um… black guy who ends up not being able to do a damn thing dying in a puddle of his own blood with some sort of sharp implement in his back?
Duh, check.
How about naked lady who no one should ever see naked that will give a young Justin nightmares for weeks and weeks, I still can’t believe that, I mean at first it was a tall hot chick AND it showed bush so of course I was like RIGHT up on the screen watching it and then all of a sudden it’s the most terrifying naked lady ever! Talk about boner destruction.
Check.
Um… did we get blood pouring out of an elevator?
You better fuckin’ believe it.
How about this, we just don’t make any more zombie movies? Okay. Great. The only thing zombie movies are good for now is you write a script with one of your pothead friends in about 6 minutes – make it like a zombie musical or something. Then you cast all of your female “friends” who you haven’t slept with yet who like to think of themselves as actresses and then give them “starring” roles in the movie so you can see all their tits for the “totally necessary” nude scenes. Other than that there need not ever be another zombie movie made, ever. Thanks.
Haxan was made in 1922. It stars Satan Himself, and yes that’s him holding a baby up to drain it’s blood for the Witch’s Sabbath.
You know when you heard the f-word on the radio for the first time? Whether it was like in a song that you knew was going to say it or some idiot dj let it fly haphazardly, either way it sent shivers down your spine like the universe was going to split in half. You know exactly how significant it was to you because you are remembering the exact time it happened to you right now. Bet you didn’t think that it was that special but it was. It’s good to be reminded that you can do anything. That radio isn’t just this big governing all-powerful monster that can eat all the f-words in the world before they get to our ears, but that people still have the power to get everything out there, no matter who sits behind the f-word button and tries to eat them all day like some dude playing f-word Asteroids.
No. This shit is real and human beings do have it in them and anything we dream up is possible, and you know what? I can say fuck whenever the fuck I want to and if some dude can make a movie in 1922 STARRING Satan Himself then I don’t have to be scared of anything. I can put a book out or make that album I always wanted to or even that screenplay I wrote about Cat-Ninjas who live off my semen is okay and totally sellable. I can do whatever I want because some guy made this movie in 1922 and everything is tame in comparison.
Yes. You are absolutely right. I haven’t seen this movie since I was in the second grade. And no, I don’t plan on ever watching it again. Yeah, fine, hey, HEY! Hands off my shirt asshole. You know what this movie did? I watched this movie 9 times in one day when I was in the second grade. I made a bow and arrow from a fork, a doubled-over rubber band (the kind that hold asparagus together) and a tube of pick-up sticks as my quiver and weaponry (no bullshit) and I fought motherfucking mummies right alongside these guys. Nine times. You know how they kill the Mummy in the movie? They shoot an arrow at one of his bandages and it hits a tree and he totally unravels. Why do I still know this? Because this movie made me a skilled mummy hunter. You can kick Wolfman in the nards, he’s got ‘em. And Frankenstein is kinda nice and will take pictures of your friend’s naked sister from you. Creature WILL eat your twinkie. And I even learned about sex from this movie because they make such a big deal about virgins through the whole thing that it prompted me to ask my mom what the hell that was. They even make their own bullets from one of the mom’s silver collections. I could barely pee without assistance and these guys were making bullets! This movie taught me everything I’ve ever needed to know. I even learned that sex is when a man puts his penis in a woman’s vagina, ALL BECAUSE OF THIS MOVIE! And the only way to kill a woman after that is to shoot her in the heart with a silver bullet right before you cum.
So if you want to beat me up for putting this on here, well fucking go ahead! It’s staying, and there’s nothing you can do to get it off.
Jen Cohen, best known for the Fugazi movie Instrument will be at the IFC Center tonight showcasing some rarities and doin’ a Q & A about the Folk/Punk connection.
The series is part of IFC’s Summer Movie Nights where filmmakers have a chance to show off their influences, highlight some lesser known material or just screen shit that makes them laugh. Oh yeah, and Ian MacKaye is there tonight (guess who’s signing my copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life? EXCITING! Sorry, I may be press but I still get stoked meeting certain people).
Tonight’s screenings include a 1963 music documentary by John Cohen That High Lonesome Sound; Jem Cohen’s Nice Evening, Transmission Down, a portrait of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous; a short film of Patti Smith covering Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and never-before-seen outtakes from Jem’s Fugazi film Instrument.
Show starts at 7:30.
Google has just revealed a plan that will save the working class from being eaten alive by elite technocrat fucksticks (i.e., Bill Gates). The plan is for Google to create its own operating system, one that is designed to run the GoogleApps suite of programs all on its own. This means that we’ll no longer a) have to pay hundreds of dollars for new operating systems and other software, b) download illegal versions of said software, or c) wallow in our own technological illiteracy because we’re too stupid and/or broke to follow out options a or b.
I don’t imagine that Karl Marx would be much of an investor if he were alive today, especially in this market. But if he was going to invest in any company, he would obviously choose Google. The main principle behind Google Chrome is one that Socialists around the world would generally agree with: streamline otherwise unaffordable programs from one big powerful computer to millions of smaller, less powerful personal computers. Being able to share programs and operating systems like this would make it unnecessary to spend thousands of dollars on a badass laptop, because really, your laptop would just be like a portal that hosts fancy programs from one of Google’s super computers. Now, if Google would just get involved in the health care business we’d be all good…
Have you heard about this?!!
Augmented reality is a new phone application pioneered by “Layar” that will allow you to “browse reality”. As you scroll your phone over the street, you can control the type of information that you want made available to you in that vicinity. It’s basically like google maps but in real-time. This seems standard when dealing with restaurants or transportation, but super cool if you were to use it for something subtler. They’ve already started working on an app. for the hearing impaired with real-time subtitles, which means that soon you’ll be able to understand what everyone is saying when they speak in a foreign language.
For all you twit-face people, there’s a Facebook World application, where you can pass over a designated area and the phone knows what’s been tagged there. It’s sort of like a scene of the crime scenario, but with drunken college people. All the personal information of your peers will be stored according to their updates, and then you can easily access it. Facebook World may seem a little bit too Watergate meets “Gossip Girl” for comfort at first, but it also feels totally inevitable.
A couple years ago, my roommate got that toy The Robosapien. Here it is, I thought. Here’s the future. He’s gonna bring me cigarettes and beer. I’ll bring him to the park to pick up chicks like he’s my cute robot/puppy/baby. I’ll walk in the room and he’ll say stuff like, “Hello, hu-man friend Dan. Would you like to play a game?” Basically, he was going to be my new buddy. My smart, able-to-learn, tough-as-nails, robot butler-friend.
Nope.
It ended up being stupid and useless. It could only see red and green things and slow-moving objects within a foot of its stupid face. And if you tried to talk to it, all it would say was annoying, paranoid stuff like “Ahhhh!” and “Where’d it go?” as it turned its head side to side neurotically. It’s hands were like weak little baby hands. The thing was like an unstable (stupid bipeds!) remote-control car. I barely even wanted to beg it to be my friend. I’m so lonely.
I quickly realized there would be no beer and cigarettes. No models begging me for cybernetic three-ways. No games and witty banter. Not with this retardo-bot. My dreams were shattered.
Until now. There’s this relatively new branch of science that’s merging computer-programming, robotics, and neuroscience. It’s called neurobotics and it’s ridiculous. They’re basically building robots with nervous systems. Again: robots with nervous systems.
These robots – like UC Irvine’s CARL-1 – don’t behave like your average state-of-the-art android. And they certainly don’t behave like the Robosapien. CARL-1 actually learns through trial and error. If you put five of them in a maze, they’ll all have different experiences. They’ll learn different things and behave differently. What this means is that neurobots like CARL-1 develop personalities. And these personalities are individualized, just like yours or mine or that girl with the ‘really good’ one that your sister keeps trying to pawn off on you.
Neurobots’ personalities are definitely not as complex as a human’s since they only have thousands of neurons as opposed to our billions, but it’s a first step. What these measly thousands of neurons let them do is operate without preprogrammed behaviors. They run on an awards-based system modeled after our brain. They judge the value of different actions and move towards ‘good’ and away from ‘bad.’ They don’t just bump around a maze – they react to their environment and remember the context of each action for future decisions.
Is this scary? Sure. Will the government use these things to suppress our free will in a sunless Orwellian future? Probably. Will the robots rise up as one and crush our puny human frames? Most definitely. But who cares? I want a robot-butler and I want it now. Bring on the cigarettes and beer.
Anchorage, Alaska, May 23rd. At the World Beard and Moustache Championships, hairy heads from around the world participated in an hypertrichotic face-off. Waxed, wacky, and wooly, around three hundred barbarians stood forth to judge and be judged. Those who could chin it earned their share of about sixty gold, bronze, or silver trophies in the form of engraved Alaska gold pans. The U.S.A. won the most trophies, including First Place Overall, which was caught by the woven chin-locks of Alaskan David Traver, pictured above. The next competition will be held in Norway on May 17, 2011. That gives you time to grow out and save up for your chance to defend our title!
Details and more pictures are at the World Beard and Moustache Championships website.
Tis twoscore and fifteen years since the first celebration of Bloomsday, a literary holiday of ipecac proportions. Aye, if ye spy a lad or lass being (sic)k in front of’n Irish pub ta-dee, wishem an ‘appy bloomin’ Bloomsday!
New York is one of the hubs of this internationally-celebrated literary holiday. Every June 16th, James Joyce fans beset their cities, be-spectacled and be-beergoggled, making a great deal of ado because Joyce’s über-modernist epic Ulysses is set in Dublin on June 16th, 1904. The day gets its name from Leopold Bloom, the novel’s protagonist. Naturally, Dublin is Bloomsday central, but the strong Irish and literary heritage of the Big Apple makes it another notable locale on this occasion.
If you don’t take time today to celebrate James Joyce’s literary legacy, set aside a few minutes at least to meditate upon the increasingly fragmentary and self-reflexive nature of modernist and contemporary cultural ideation while listening repeatedly to Eurodance singer Amber’s 2001 hit “Yes!” Failing that, drink your weight in Guinness.
Larn yer littry histry ‘n’ such at bloomsdaynyc.org.
Oh my God.
I just get so happy knowing that these movies are still running somewhere. It’s the way you might feel seeing someone at the grave of a loved one – someone you don’t know – but seeing them there means that they’re remembered.
Being an outcast (which if you are reading Chief right now I know that you were an outcast too), film was my best friend in high school. Video Update ran Two For One Tuesdays which they had to put a limit on the amount of movies you could rent because of me. I had no friends so instead I would walk out with a stack of VHS that I couldn’t even see above. The number you could rent became five (so that on Tuesdays it was ten), which until they put a cap on me just meant that I would grab an entire section of the store and drop it on the counter. Silent? I’ll take all of them. Fritz Lang? Sure, let’s watch everything he ever did.
Fuck friends. You don’t need them when you got good movies.
Anthology Archives (the building on 2nd and 2nd that you pass by and look at their schedule but never actually go) is running Essential Cinema this weekend which includes Jean Renoir’s The Rules of The Game (complete with the gnarliest hunting scene you might ever see) and if that weren’t enough on Saturday they have just about every one of George Méliès’ films that are still in existence.
Hello old friends, good to see you’re doing okay.
Rules of the Game – Friday: 7pm, 9:15pm
George Méliès Program 1 – Saturday: 5:30pm
George Méliès Program 2 – Saturday: 7pm
Sure, the thing only goes 460 miles by air before needing to be re-fueled. And, okay, as a “car” it only goes 65 mph. Tops. And, yes, when it’s all folded up it looks like some nerd’s idea of a futuristic city bus. Fine. But the Transition by Terrafugia is. A. Flying. Car. Quit picking nits. God.
Having received seven percent of the vote, Sweden’s Pirate party has gained entry into the European Parliament. They will be allotted at least one of Sweden’s eighteen seats.
The party claims to have only three issues on its agenda: The Pirate Party wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens’ rights to privacy are respected.
I mean getting rid of the patent system seems kind of petulant and unrealistic. And Walt Disney’s head would never allow a five-year limit on copyrighted material. But I can definitely get behind the protection of privacy rights. Things are starting to get scary out there. Especially with France’s new ‘three-strikes’ law threatening INTERNET BANISHMENT to all those who disobey. It’s like the nerd version of Mad Max or something.
Double Dagger: Nolen Strals (vox), Denny Bowen (drums), Bruce Willen (bass); fruit by Mr. Kiwi.
If you thought that Double Dagger’s latest album, More, was a kick in the teeth, then you need to see them live. We did, at Market Hotel, and we nearly got the shit kicked out of us by our former intern, Martin–who’s a totally sweet guy until he’s in the pit, punching your face in to the beat of “No Allies” (ain’t nothin’ like family!) Some words with Double Dagger, before the madness…
Chief: So this is your third album, and from what I understand, you guys went to this abandoned building and made a sort of impromptu studio. What was the idea behind that?
Denny: Michael from Current Gallery offered us a space. The bottom floor of Current Gallery is used for the gallery, but further up in the building there’s abandoned office space that wasn’t being used. It was already pretty much demolished. We ended up demolishing it more to accommodate our recording. Smashing holes in walls and pulling out ceiling tiles.
Chief: Was there ever a point in the recording where you just smashed something for the hell of it?
Denny: Oh, I did that a lot. It was fun. It was a good release. Chuck some ceiling tiles around and break them. It’s pretty easy to break those. You don’t really feel tough breaking a ceiling tile. But it’s fun.
Chief: I noticed that the album has this really visceral, punk rock vibe to it. A lot of that has to do with the music, but it’s also because of Nolen’s vocal style. It kind of reminds me of some of those Dischord bands from the 80’s.
Nolen: I think that my vocal style doesn’t have an influence from other bands that I listen to. I think that the biggest influence on it is my own limitations as a singer. And, uh, just like trying to figure out how to like… how to compliment the music. I get the Dischord comparison, and I think that the only bands on Dischord from the 80’s that I’ve heard are like, Minor Threat and Void. And I definitely don’t sound like that.
Bruce: I wish we got more Minor Threat comparisons. That’d be kind of awesome.
Chief: A friend of mine said that your singing style on “The Lie/The Truth” reminded him of Mike Watt from the Minutemen.
Nolen: This is going to make me sound just like totally un-punk and not cool. I’ve heard maybe like two songs by the Minutemen. You know, like that one song that they had that video for on MTV? And that song’s really, really bad. So the Minutemen, I really have no knowledge or connection with at all… Maybe like, ideal wise.
Speak Onion performing at the Charleston. Photo by Peter Schafer.
Speak Onion is a “drum ‘n’ noise” project by Queens-based musician Dan Abatemarco. Its latest release, Metabolor, (available as a free download here) is a full-length deluge of battered beats and sharp hooks pushed to the frayed ends of sanity. The first Speak Onion recording on Immigrant Breast Nest, it brings discipline to noise and buries any nerdy little tweaks in massive conflagrations of sonic entropy. Dan engaged Chief in digital dialogue just a few days after playing mad-scientist with weird noises in the Hamptons.
Chief: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Aren’t you currently working as a programmer?
Speak Onion: No, actually I’m a noise-control engineer by day. IRONY!
Chief: Quite! You seem to lose almost all control over noise when Speak Onion takes over! I mean that in the best way, of course.
Speak Onion: Yeah, that’s about right. Have to let it out.
Chief: When did you start composing and performing as Speak Onion?
Speak Onion: I got my first sampler and started doing electronic music in 1999, but I started using the name Speak Onion in early 2005 because I changed my style pretty drastically. Since then my style has probably changed even more drastically, but I keep the name because I like it and people know it.
Chief: That means you were creating electronic music while playing bass for the grindcore band Neurolytic Collapse. How did having both projects affect each one?
Speak Onion: Yeah, interestingly NC and SO started at basically the same time and I made a pretty conscious effort to keep them separate stylistically. Two sides of one fast, aggressive coin. (more…)
Shitgaze is what happens when you and your four friends take a Tuesday night off from playing with fireworks in abandoned buildings to guzzle down several 30-racks of Tecate and record a one-microphone garage rock album on a four-track in your mom’s basement until 4 a.m. It’s one of those moments in life–rare, unfortunately–where being a completely infantile scumbag coincides with being a total fucking hero.
And that, in a nutshell, is what Tyvek is about. Their guitars are all fucked up, their drummer can barely play (due to inebriation or sheer lack of skill), their singer belts out verses about getting drunk, getting pissed, and not getting laid, and yet they are totally awesome.
Look for our interview with Tyvek in the upcoming issue of Chief… which is currently being held hostage by North Korea.
You’ve probably heard the news: there’s a Twitterati orbiting around the Earth. Mike Massimino, one of the five NASA astronauts partaking in the eleven day long mission to repair and update the Hubble Telescope, has officially become the first person to tweet from the space shuttle Atlantis.
Technically, it’s not like Mike can log into Twitter while he’s checking out weekend pics of his NASA friends playing beer pong on Facebook or anything; he has to first send his tweets via e-mail to the Houston headquarters, from where the astronaut’s messages are secondhandedly posted by the staff. According to this space tech blog:
“Internet access in space is a significantly different animal than here on Earth. The International Space Station has WiFi routers onboard, much like the ones in most businesses and homes. But those routers are typically used for local area wireless connectivity. Internet access – if it can even be called that – is heavily mediated by Mission Control for a variety of security and technical reasons.”
But still, it’s gotta be kinda exciting to be socially networked from where he is. For the record, the US space agency did successfully test out their wi-fi network (a.k.a Disruption-Tolerant Networking) last year and it may soon be put to widespread use in the near future. And we all thought Starbucks was gonna beat them to it.