John’s Crawlspace

I went to see 28 Weeks Later with my girlfriend on Monday. I really liked the first one, so I had my hopes up that the sequel wouldn’t be a disappointment… And it definitely wasn’t. I can honestly say it was just as entertaining as the first one. The style of directing and the cinematography of 28 Days Later were part of the reason why it was so well received. This style was also used in the sequel, and it worked just as well. I’m not gonna write a synopsis of the movie or anything here, but it is definitely worth checking out if you liked the original. And if you haven’t seen the original yet, you should check it out. You could definitely enjoy 28 Weeks Later without having seen it’s predecessor, but I think you’d be better off having seen the original first.

Someone reminded me how long it’s been since I posted ‘freebies’ on here… So here we go. Ping pong rules poster, Ban deodorant, GlucoBurst sample, “Believer” shirt, Aerobitine sample, Fleecho shirt, $10 Starbucks card, Mr. Coffee sampler, Natural Choice dog/cat food, Ultra Downy sample, SnapFish: Photo mug & 20 prints, “Pretty Feet & Hands” sample, deck of cards, Atkins Diet samples, and Colgate Total Advanced Clean.

Ozzfest is also free this year, as I’m sure you’ve probably heard. Definitely not my #1 choice as far as Summer concerts/music festivals go, but its probably worth checking out for free… I’d definitely like to see Lamb of God, Nick Olveri & Mondo Generator, Nile, 3 Inches of Blood, Behemoth, and The Showdown… And there are some other bands on the lineup that I’m not familiar with that may be decent as well. Anyway, get your ticket codes here. I wish I knew how to gleek.

So the Bonnaroo 2007 schedule was finally released yesterday. I’ve been waiting for a long time to see this thing, and it was inevitable that I’d be disappointed. I only say that because, with the amount of bands that I want to see there, there’s bound to be some scheduling conflicts. I’m not gonna make definite decisions on who I will and will not see there yet, since I guess it sort of depends on who my friends are going to see (as of now there’s 13 of us going), though I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing bands by myself either.

As of now though, I’d like to see The Little Ones, Apollo Sunshine, Clutch, Cold War Kids, Brazilian Girls, Kings of Leon, The Black Keys, Tool, Aesop Rock, El-P, DJ Shadow, Dr Dog, Gogol Bordello, The Hold Steady, Ween, The Police, The Flaming Lips, Bob Weir & Ratdog, Wilco, The White Stripes, and Widespread Panic.

But if I did see all of those bands, I’d miss out on seeing Mute Math, The National, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Tea Leaf Green, Tortoise, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Hot Chip, The Nightwatchman, The Roots, Manu Chao, String Cheese, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Old Crow Medicine Show, The Slip, Railroad Earth, Hot Tuna, Spoon, Keller Williams, Gov’t Mule, Galactic (with tons of awesome hip-hop guests), Girl Talk, Wolfmother, The Decemberists, and Ornette Coleman. And those are just the acts that I’d really like to see that I’d be missing - There are a lot of others as well. So it’s pretty frustrating. It wasn’t this bad last year, because I hadn’t checked out as many of the bands beforehand, so I guess I didn’t really know what I was missing.

This is the best thing I’ve seen all day… Have a good Memorial Day weekend everybody.

I was checking out music on some mp3 blogs, and decided I’d steal some of their links and post them here.

Most of you know how I feel about pop music, the majority of it sucks, but there are some exceptions. Say Anything, in my opinion, is definitely one of those exceptions. They have a real poppy sound, much like any other band that tends to get lumped into this whole ‘emo’ pop-punk thing thats going on right now, but there is something about them that really grabs me. I’m pretty sure that this .rar file has both ‘Is A Real Boy’ and ‘Was A Real Boy’ in it, and both are definitely worth checking out if you feel like giving it a chance. And if you’re into that emo/pop/punk/whatever crap to begin with, then I’m sure you’ll dig this, as it won’t be much of a stretch for you.

If you are into any of the bands that tend to be classified as ‘metalcore’, then I’m sure you’re familiar with Killswitch Engage. They are more or less the poster children (poster adults?) for the genre. And while their latest efforts are mediocre at best, every once in a while I go back and listen to their first, self-titled album, and I’m completely blown away by how good it is. I had a roommate last year who was only into older metal like Testament and Napalm Death, and hated all this new stuff, and when I put this album on he asked who it was… When I told him it was Killswitch Engage, he didn’t believe me. Anyway, even if you don’t like the band, if you’re into metal at all, I think that their self-titled album is definitely worth your time… They had a different singer back then too, and I think he was much better than Howard Jones, the current duder. Anyway, grab that shiz here. (Link fixed)

Kyuss is one of those bands that a lot of bands cite as an inspiration, but you don’t really hear them that often. They’re not around anymore, but members of the band went on to form bands such as Queens of the Stone Age, Unida, and Fu Manchu. If you like that stoner-rock groove type sound, this is a band you should definitely check out. To the best of my knowledge (I’m too lazy to check for sure) they only released three albums: “…And The Circus Leaves Town”, “Welcome To Sky Valley”, and “Blues for the Red Sun”. Enjoy.

And here’s some other albums you should download, because I said so. Don’t question it. Underminded - Hail Unamerican!”, Tiger Army - “III: Ghost Tigers Rise”Beyond The Sixth Seal - “The Resurrection of Everything Tough”, Amorphis - “Elegy”, Rancid - “Life Won’t Wait”, Dark Tranquility - “Character”, Arsis - “A Celebration of Guilt”, Isis - “Oceanic”, Testament - “Low”, Refused - “The Shape of Punk to Come”, , Dead Kennedys - “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables”, Nailbomb - “Point Blank”, Faith No More - “The Real Thing”, Faith No More - “Angel Dust”, Dr. Octagon - “Dr. Octagonecologyst”, Illogic - “Celestial Clockwork”, Extended Famm - “Happy Fuck You Songs”, and Cannibal Ox - “The Cold Vein”. I’m gonna stop there… If you want more, check out this great list of mp3 blogs, sorted by genre.

I’ll wrap this up with a link to the cover art and tracklisting for Aesop Rock’s upcoming album, “None Shall Pass”, which I’m ridiculously excited for… Here. If you’re getting sick of all this music (or just don’t like any of it), not to fear, the next update will be a normal one.

Oh yeah, and I uploaded the new Horse the Band CD, “A Natural Death”, but forgot to post it here… So you can download that here. You’re on your honor to go out and purchase every single album I posted here. Even if you didn’t download any of them. And you have to buy them all at FYE at full price.

Edit: For whatever reason, the comments on this post (and the last one) just disappeared, sorry about that… Leave ‘em again if you don’t mind, I didn’t have a chance to respond to ‘em.

I know I don’t write about what I do in my personal life on here as much as I used to… But for whatever reason, I feel like doing that now. My brother’s band, Still Motion, played at the North Star Bar in Philadelphia on Friday night, so I checked that out with a bunch of friends, and they played an awesome show. It was the fourth round of the Emergenza Music Festival, which is a battle of the bands type deal, and they got first place once again, which doesn’t really surprise me, but it’s cool regardless. They blew the other bands there out of the water - The judging is done by a show of hands, and when I turned around, I saw pretty much every hand in the room raised. After that, we headed back to my house, where my roommates and about 25 other people were already hammered, we had 2 kegs so that was fun.

On Saturday, a bunch of us headed to this Coors Light thing, Rocky Mountain Spring Fest, at McFadden’s in the city. We all signed up to be on the guest list like a week or so prior to the event, so I guess I was under the impression that we were being ‘hooked up’ in some way. Well, I was wrong. Half of our names didn’t even end up being on the guest list, so some of us had to pay $15 just to get in. Even after that, Coors & Coors Light were $3 each, which seems lame to me since the event was sponsored by Coors, and that stuff sucks anyway. I’ve never been to any type of ‘MySpace Party’ or anything like that, but I’d imagine that this is what one would look like. Most of the girls there looked like models, but everyone just seemed really fake and trendy. I’ve never been to a place with that high of a concentration of those types of people before, it kind of wierded me out. Some photographer dude took like 200 pictures of us, I’m kinda curious as to where those will end up. Anyway, we ended up leaving after about an hour or so, and we walked to The Khyber, which is definitely more my type of place. I’ve been there a few times before… Actually, the last time I was there was to see Still Motion play. Anyway, when you walk in, the ‘merch booth’ where they sell tickets and band stuff is on your immediate right. I glanced down and saw some ‘Mouth of the Architect‘ shirts, and it took a minute for me to realize that they were probably playing there that night, or why else would they be selling that stuff? I really dig those guys, so that was a nice surprise. It was about 9 pm at this point, and they didn’t end up coming on ’til 10:30 or so, but it was definitely worth the wait. My friends aren’t into that type of stuff at all, so I decided to be antisocial and check them out by myself, but I’m glad I did. The music is pretty heavy, but it’s very atmospheric and has an epic feel to it - I’m pretty sure the setlist was only four songs, but they played for almost an hour. The other bands on the bill were Unsane and 400 Blows, but I decided to duck out after Mouth of the Architect finished, not really into Unsane from what I heard. The guys were hanging out outside the bar afterwards, and it was cool to get a chance to talk to them and stuff. I don’t get to check out live music nearly as much as I’d like to, and this is a band I’d probably never have gotten a chance to see otherwise, because none of my friends are really into that type of stuff, and normally I can’t imagine going to see a band alone - I guess the booze helped in this particular situation. Anyway, I uploaded the only two albums that the band has out… Well, at least the only two that I’m aware of anyway.

The Ties That Blind (2006) & Time and Withering (2004) - Download Here

You can download the new album by 3 Inches of Blood, “Fire Up The Blades”, by clicking here. I haven’t had a chance to hear the whole thing yet, but I highly doubt that it will disappoint. If you like it, buy it when it comes out on June 26th. Carry on.

How eclectic are your musical tastes? According to this script, which analyzes your top 20 last.fm artists, my ‘eclectic score’ is 86/100. So that means I win. And this cop loses… What an idiot.

As of yesterday, it costs 41 cents to send a letter in the mail - Stamp prices were raised on May 14, from the previous price of 39 cents. No big deal, right? I agree. But the US Postal Service is now selling “forever stamps”. What the hell is a forever stamp, you ask? It’s a stamp that is sold at a set price (in books of 20) but can be used anytime you like. So if you buy a book of forever stamps at 41 cents each, even if stamps cost 50 cents each a few years from now, you can still use these stamps. So I guess if you’re really good at not losing stuff, and want to save yourself like… A dollar or two… Then head to your nearest post office today! You can buy them online, too. Now the real question is, why did I bother taking time out of my day to write about postage stamps?

I don’t really watch TV shows or anything online, but I know some people that do. Obviously there’s a good amount of people that do, judging by the number of websites out there that offer every episode of a ton of tv shows. I’ve gotta say that I am a bit curious how these sites manage to stick around while blatantly violating copyright laws. Anyway, I don’t have a whole lot to say about that, I just wanted to link to Filmzzz.com but didn’t know what to write along with the link. Filmzzz.com doesn’t feature tv shows, though - It’s all full-length movies. I think that by now, most of us know how to go about finding pretty much any movie online (via torrents or other p2p methods) in close to DVD quality, but I guess that using sites like this one can be more convenient sometimes.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 is finally upon us. I’ve used it a good bit since it’s been released, though for the most part I’ve been using it for the exact same stuff that I was using CS2 for. I’m trying to integrate the new features into my work habits, and thus far I’ve only been succesful with the ‘Quick Selection Tool’ and the Smart Filters. Anyway, this article does a decent job summarizing the best new features of CS3.

This shouldn’t be anything new to most of you, but I tried out 20 Questions online the other day, and I’ve gotta say, that’s pretty cool. I was thinking of Slayer and it guessed it. I understand how it works and all that so it’s not like mind-blowing but it’s still cool nonetheless.

If you’re into movies, check out this list of The Greatest Long Tracking Shots in Cinema. It’s pretty cool, with descriptions of each scene, and clips for most of them as well.

I’m definitely not a tree hugger by any means, but I am interested in sustainability and green energy and all that good stuff. But once in a while I come across something that just seems a little bit ridiculous. Blackle.com is an example of one of those things. Apparently, all white web pages use about 74 watts to display, while all black pages use only 59 watts. Google is mostly white, and gets roughly 200 million queries every day. So theoretically, Google could reduce global energy use by 750 Megawatt-hours a year - And it’d be as simple as changing the site to a black color scheme. And thus, Blackle.com was born. The site itself wouldn’t load for me when I was writing this. Anyway, I’m not sure why, but that seems dumb to me. Now that I think about it, I guess it makes sense, but I don’t think I’d want to surf an all-black internet. But that’s probably just due to the fact that I’m a huge bigot, and I just don’t know it yet. Sorry. Just to spite the creators of blackle, I’m starting my own search engine. It’s called Blankle, and it’s even more harmful to the Earth than Google! The only catch is that it doesn’t actually work… At all. But as an added bonus, if you go out in public and scream ‘BLANKLE!‘ at the top of your lungs, people will grab their children and do their best to avoid you - They’ll either think you have tourettes or rabies - You win either way. Anyway, you should probably all start doing your part today by setting Blankle as your homepage. And by the way, I wasn’t serious with that hemp diapers link.

It’s always interesting to hear both sides of a story. This particular story sounds similiar to things that have happened to me - The general themes of misinterpretation and things being blown out of proportion (to ridiculous lengths) were consistent throughout my 4 years of high school (and the years before and after as well). That’s not to say I wasn’t a dumb teenager - I was 100% guilty of more than my share of absolutely retarded things. But I also had things pinned on me that ranged from exaggerated to completely untrue. Some of these things I’m sure I posted on here in the past, while others seemed in my best interest not to mention… If you’re a long-time reader, I’m sure that at least one story will come to mind. If not, you either weren’t paying attention, or you’ve been smoking out of tinfoil pipes too often. Anyway, here is this kid (Michael Reem)’s side of the story, and these two news stories (one and two) show the version of the story that the media is telling everyone. After reading Michael Reem’s side of the story, I feel that he probably did a little more than just walk into the school, throw some eggs, and walk out. Either he has been in trouble in school in the past, or some of the kids who were with him at the time were doing stuff they shouldn’t have been that day too. But he must be leaving some details out - He never explained why the police were at his house asking about a DUI or drug possession, or explained why one of his friends stole stuff from the school, or even why they were in possession of materials that could potentially be used to make a bomb. But you know that those news articles are definitely not all true either. The kid could be complete innocent, and now he’s totally screwed. Either way, it’s a shitty situation to be in, and I can honestly say it’s a type of scenario I’m quite familiar with.

On a completely unrelated note, if you enjoy the albums I post on here, take two seconds and leave me a comment letting me know. When there is zero feedback, I don’t know if I’m wasting my time uploading the albums. If you enjoy them - or if you don’t, and would like to see other types of music on here - let me know.

Too tired to make an actual post out of this. Patton Oswalt is hilarious. He has a new album out, titled “Werewolves and Lollipops”. Unfortunately I’ve been too busy to listen to it yet, but I’m sure it’s good. Download that shiz here. If it sucks, I’ll give you back your 16 bucks.

In the comments of my last post regarding the new Tomahawk album, someone asked me to post the other two albums by that band. So ‘Mit Gas’ and ‘Tomahawk’ are both in one archive and can be downloaded here.

Also, someone wanted the new Tori Amos CD. Not a big fan myself, but hey, knock yourself out - You can download Tori’s new album, ‘American Doll Posse’, right here.

I uploaded those albums. Now it’s time to steal some links from other people. Grab the new Job For A Cowboy album, ‘Genesis’, here. And just so we have some genre contrast going on, you can get the new Artic Monkeys album, ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, right here. Job For A Cowboy is sort of an up-and-coming ‘extreme metal’ sort of band, and Artic Monkeys are… Well, pop, I guess, I never really got into them but I know a lot of people like them.

Those last two downloads were stolen from Emofreak’s Delight, and man, that site sure could use like fifty more popups.