Look out! He's got a knife!

Creature Feature

OK. This could be fun.

I want to write something about a creature. I want you to choose what sort of creature. The only rule is that it has to be an existing creature, not something made up or from mythology.

Then, I want you to tell me the context for the creature: am I writing from the point of view of the creature, or about someone fighting or hiding from the creature, or about someone befriending the creature, or what?

So I'd like you to suggest a creature and a context. Once we have five creatures and five contexts, I'd like you to vote on which creature you prefer and which context you prefer.

Then you can sit back and see what happens. Or not. It's up to you.

Dasily Goddamn

Courtesy of not a dalek.

OK, I'm out. Can someone please send me one for Friday?

On the Privatization of Disaster Relief

[link] to article by Naomi Klein.

David Gregory left Blue Underground

According to Tim Lucas anyway.

That's a damn shame in a way. David's excellent featurettes manage to pack more interest into 15-20 minutes than most big studio DVD extras manage in hours and hours. On the other hand, he is apparently going to be doing more of them for Dark Sky and has started his own company as well, Severin Films.

I was hoping that BU would pick up Jess Franco's last film with Harry Alan Towers, Count Dracula, and include the vintage surreal doco Vampyr and a new restrospective by David Gregory. That would complete the set. But at least he got to work on Succubus and the Red Lips films (Two Undercover Angels and Kiss Me, Monster) before he left. I've now got something like 3 hours worth of Franco documentaries directed by Gregory covering his '60s movies alone. It's gold, I tell you!

I'm sure all this is beyond incomprehensible to everyone reading my blog. I care not.

Poll: Your favourite book

What's your favourite book?

I'd like to read it.

Two rules:

1/ Please only post books you've actually read.

2/ There is no second rule.

US Naval officer charged over Guantanamo leak

[link]

I wonder who the NGO was? Amnesty International perhaps? Given that he's not been charged with espionage, it must be someone like that.

Daily Goddamn

More Moose Madness fo yo hat. Click the picture to actually see it.

My blood pumper is wronged!

Poll:

What is the greatest (or best, or just your favourite) album of all time?

Feel free to post a whole top 5 or top 10 if you want, just make it clear which one is #1.

Digital = Inferior To Print?

Euro-horror guru and Throat Sprockets author Tim Lucas has written an interesting entry over at Video WatchBlog. I'll post an edited quote:

"I sincerely believe that while people read books and magazines, they surf the internet ... [W]hen I feel like reading print, I grab the one book or magazine I want to read; I don't grab an armful and then flip through them until I find something that holds my flighty attention, which I then drop after a minute or two's perusal."

I fully agree with this. It has parallels in my writing too: this year I've written about 30,000 words in my blog, but it's all very shallow; meanwhile I've written (er) considerably less of my novel but it's carefully thought out and quite well written.

The Internet is a vast sea of words we can half pay attention to. A book is a much smaller gathering of letters that holds our attention fully. Ever disappeared into a single website as thoroughly as into a single book?

Daily Goddamn

The Moose howls for human flesh!

Tauranga = NZ's biggest losers

It now seems beyond obvious that Bob Clarkson is even more of a fucktard than Winston Peters. [link]

I'd like to know what he thinks Muslim women should wear instead to "fit in" - jeans and t-shirts? Business suits? Grass skirts? PVC pervert outfits? Rugby uniforms? What is our national dress? What do mainstream New Zealanders wear?

Unfortunately that link left out the part where he referred to a nun's clothing as a "habitat".

To be fair, Clarkson is never going to be anything other than a twit - one just has to look at the fool to see that. The problem is the entire electorate full of morons who voted him in.

I propose we expel Tauranga from New Zealand. They can be part of Pitcairn from now on. Who's with me?

The Diabolical Dr. Z (1965)

Doctor Zimmer has found the centres of Good and Evil in the central nervous system. Upon presenting his findings to the scientific world, the ridicule he is subjected to causes him to have a heart attack and die.

His daughter Irma promptly fakes her own death, and launches her plan for revenge: she kidnaps a local nightclub performer known as Miss Death, and brainwashes her into murdering the scientists who had ridiculed her father. The problem is that Miss Death keeps remembering who she really is, and isn't too keen on her nightclub act extending to the real world...

This is the fourth of Jess Franco's horror movies, and the last in his first major cycle. Despite some major over-reliance on coincidences, it's very good indeed. The fact that this just about was the only period in Franco's epic (160+ movies and counting) fimography when he worked on only one movie at a time probably helps. The script is by Jean-Claude Carriere, who's best known for co-writing most of Luis Buñuel's late movies (e.g. Belle De Jour, Diary of a Chambermaid, That Obscure Object of Desire, etc).

Estelle Blain is fantastic as Miss Death, both very sexy and very convincing in a difficult role. Franco turns up in one of his traditional roles as the cop on the case, and he's great as usual. Howard Vernon appears as one of Miss Death's hit list.

The music by Daniel White (who also appears as an incompetent visiting Scotland Yard detective) moves assuredly from ominous horror movie music to some pretty wild jazz for the action scenes. Miss Death's nightclub act prefigures what was to become a standard in Franco movies (it was explicitly reference as recently as 1998's Eight Legs To Love You With) and is spooky and fun.

The black & white photography is very atmospheric in the gothic mode. There's quite a bit of intentional humour, most of which actually works, especially Franco's revelation of how he solved the case.

This and The Castle of Fu Manchu are the only Franco movies I've seen to contain no female nudity. Thanks to Ms. Blain it's pretty damned sexy anyhow. This would be a splendid introduction to the uniquely insane world of Jess Franco: it contains a straight narrative; it fits into a recognisable genre; it's made with genuine polish; and it introduces or includes many of the themes that continue to obsess Franco and his fans to this day.

But beware! Jess Franco is not just a filmmaker. He is a disease. I am a carrier. You may already be infected. Stay tuned...

Filipino student protestors organizing by txt

Link.

This is quite exciting as an example of popular protest organization working. However I can immediately detect two major flaws:

1/ Most groups of protestors would not be this well organized simply because they would not have this level of personal discipline;

2/ A single police informant would be able to kill the entire enterprise.

Otherwise, very encouraging.

Yay!

Wikipedia's current featured article is on The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

What a great book. If you haven't read it you understand nothing. Nothing! Fnord.

Daily Goddamn

The place: The Whitehouse. The dealer: Daffyd.

The Goddamn: TODAY!

Daily Goddamn

I found this one somewhere. I still have some submissions to put up, but I liked this for Friday.

War Games preparing for attacks by bloggers

It seems that America's Department of Homeland Security is ready for bloggers to team up with leftist charities to attack them electronically.

Bruce Sterling reports here.

Humour aside, it is a little disturbing to see that the current US administration's war against freedom is going this far.

"Too Many Cnuts" headline causes offence

I heard on the radio that a word with the same letters in it as "tunc" appeared in the headline of an Auckland University newspaper, causing offence to some delicate flowers. The article was something to do with there being more women than men enrolling. (Should I point out that the editor who approved it is a woman? Would anyone give a toss what gender she is?)

Apparently the article and the headline originated in Wellington's student magazine Salient, where there seems to have been an outraged response of nothing at all.

I don't get the fuss. It's just a word. But this leads nicely into something I've been wondering:

What's the big goddamn deal about being offended? What gives anyone the right to not ever be exposed to something they find offensive? Why is it BAD to be offended by something?

A neo-Nazi might be offended by an interracial couple. Should we care?

A prude might be offended by a woman breastfeeding in public. Should we object?

An anarchist might be offended by the existence of a government. Should we kill our leaders?

I descend into farce. But my point remains: why should you change your behaviour just because I'm offended by it?

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn was submitted by Jenni, who I will refrain from making sarcy comments about 'cause she scored me a ticket to Serenity all those months ago.

Iranians In Spaaaaace!

The first Iranian in space is a woman.

She bought a ticket.

How long before some right-wing blogging fucktard accuses this extraordinarily rich businesswoman of beign a terrorist set on blowing up the moon?

Daily Goddamn

The Moose demands a sacrifice!

Just before I Goddamn for the day...

So what the hell is going on with Aro Park? Why have they completely demolished it right before spring? Are they going to put it back together in time for the sun?

Is this the council's revenge for the locals daring to complain about a pointless motorway being shoved up their neighbourhood?

Review: Jolie Holland at (not) Indigo (anymore)

So, this grumpy old sod walks into a bar...

Jolie Holland was awesome. Really great. Sorry that I don't have a sample download for you yet, I think I'll put up Old Fashion Morphine later in the week.

There was a three-piece band: a guy on drums, a guy on guitar, and Jolie on guitar, violin, piano, and (briefly - for half an unrehearsed requested song which she abandoned) ukelele. They were very fluid and adaptable, and the drummer in particular was superb, bringing a jazz tinge to everything.

The crowd was weird, man. It seemed like everyone was either at least ten years younger or at least twenty years older than me. They were also very enthusiastic, shouting and hooting and cheering at weird moments.

Support player Samuel Flynn Scott flung some country style at us. He was pretty good, but maybe not enough swing. It was a bit disconcerting when he "fuck you"ed the crowd for not coming to his previous gig - he didn't seem to be entirely joking...

Only two demerits, neither the fault of the artists: The bar was over capacity; part of it was boxed off for renovations, and I suspect they sold enough tickets to fill that part too; and the sound, though well done, was too quiet - sometimes the chatter of the crowd overwhelmed the music and I doubt anyone heard the names of the band when Jolie introduced them.

Overall a superb show. Definitely someone to watch out for when she comes back - she seemed surprised at the size of the crowd, which seems like a good incentive to return.

Happy Birthday dear GZA...

That nigga's 40 today!

FORTY!

Night Watch - boring subtitles on DVD

If you saw the silly Russian action/fantasy/horror movie Night Watch, you will have noticed that the single most creative aspect of it was the subtitles. They are integrated into the visual aspect of the movie: subtitles change colour, move around the frame, sometimes go behind objects in frame, and once in a while are battered around the screen by explosions or wind.

Very clever and creative, and easily my favourite thing about the movie.

On the DVD, the subtitles are... unexciting. They're the same bog-standard boring font subtitles you see on every other movie. Suddenly Night Watch is even more like a typical piece-of-shit Hollywood blockbuster.

My advice is BOYCOTT THIS PIECE OF CRAP! Honestly, how cheap and penny-pinching can you get?! Especially as the original subtitles are reportedly on review copies of the DVD - just not on the copies you can rent or buy!

Daily Goddamn

Last free offer ever

There's STILL a free ticket to see Jolie Holland tonight for anyone who wants it.

Just comment on this entry and say "I want it."

The only condition is that you have to actually go to the concert.

Geez, I never thought it'd be so hard to give something valuable away for free. I'm never doing it again.

I'm going to post a song by her tomorrow so you know what you missed.

Daily Goddamn

It's the goddamn bats, man. Courtesy of the Ploughman. (Or at least that's what my spellchecker calls him.)

Stuff

Never did get Friday's tunes up. Oh well, just pretend you've heard them and make up what you thought.

The Jolie Holland gig is tomorrow night. It'd be $32 if you had to pay. Tom Waits agrees with me that she's great. And I still haven't had any takers for this damned free ticket.

Daily Goddamned soon.

Daily Goddamn

Presented by the infamous religious icon, star of stage & screen, and former media advisor to Charlotte Dawson (not to mention the sponsor of this site), David Ritchie.

Songs for Friday

This is the first in (hopefully) an ongoing series of posts where I upload some music and you listen to it.

The first song is Things That Scare Me by Neko Case. This song is taken from Neko's 2004 album Blacklisted. It's a spooky piece of bluegrass-influence country. Neko is known for her amazing voice and unconventional songwriting. I can listen to this song over and over. She comes from a punk background, and her defiantly independent attitude is probably the only thing holding her back from stardom.

Click on Neko's photo to see her Wikipedia entry.

The second song is Give It Up by J-Live & R.A. the Rugged Man. This song is taken from the 2005 album Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture. It's two underground MCs rapping over a great Wu beat by Preservation. R.A. is known for being grimey and filthy and rapping about what a fuck-up he is. J-Live is known as a conscious rapper who once dropped out of the game to become a school teacher. Neither is known very widely.

Click on their respective photos to see their wikipedia entries.

Things that make you go "Woot."

Tomorrow begins the Friday songs. I've picked 2 songs. They'll go up in the morning, and stay up until *shrug*.

In the meantime, it might be in your best interests to comment on this post.

Don't forget to keep sending me those Daily Goddamns.

Woman arrested for being claustrophobic on airplane

She was also carrying HAND CREAM! And some matches - a potent combination! She could have set fire to the pilot's hands, in the name of Allah![link]

The report mentions that reports that she was carrying a screwdriver and a note referring to al-Qaeda have been denied. According to Tom Tomorrow, radio reports claimed the note was in Arabic.

First of all, which alarmist made that part up? And why could they supposedly read Arabic - were they a terrorist?

Second of all, if the note had existed, what would it say?

"Who the hell do you think you are, carrying hand cream like that? I'm the goddamn al-Quaeda!"

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn was Moosed from Hello Cthulhu.

Hope you like my new logo, provided by a monkey fancier.

Review: Back to Basics by Christina Aguilera

Nah I'm shitting ya.

But has anyone heard this? So far she's spent her career wasting a hell of a great voice¹ on awful songs, but apparently most of the first disc in this 2-disc set is produced by DJ Premier.

_{1. I'm serious.}

Jolie Holland next Tuesday at Indigo

I am going to see excellent young American folk singer Jolie Holland at the bar formerly known as Indigo next Tuesday, the 22nd. I got into Holland after she got props from Tom Waits.

Who wants to come with me?

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn is lovingly hand-made from finest designed-in-New-Zealand-but-made-in-Japan ingredients by Godzilla's little buddy.

Iran exhibits Holocaust cartoons

An exhibition of Holocaust-themed cartoons has gone on display in Tehran. This is a response to those goddamn Danish cartoons. [link]

This strikes me as an appropriate response: fight offensiveness with offensiveness.

I'm all for freedom of speech and I'll quite happily defend anyone's rights to write and publish any sort of cartoon they want to, even if it is ill advised. But look at it this way:

You have the freedom to call your boss an ugly bald frog.

You have the right to call your mother a whore.

You have the right to call that mean-looking guy in the Slayer t-shirt a girly swot.

You've even got the right to say that you own Malibu and that Jews are responsible for all the evil in the world.

But if you do, don't expect to be able to screech "Freedom of speech!" and magically escape the consequences of what you've said.

Song for Friday?

I was thinking it would be quite nice to post an mp3 of a song each Friday for download and discussion. It would go up on Friday morning, in a post with a wee bit of info about the song, the artist, etc. It would be pulled down again on Friday evening.

We could then talk about our reactions (e.g. "I hated this f**king song and I hope the singer gets brain cancer") in comments.

The aim, apart from to generate discussion, would be to expose y'all to music you might otherwise never hear, not to infringe on copyright. I have this bizarre and no doubt anarchistic belief that people are more likely to buy music if they know they like it than if they've never heard it.

Would anyone even bother downloading and listening to it?

Allah banned by Yahoo!

Well not anymore, but you should know about this: names like "Callahan" were banned from being used as Yahoo accounts because they contained "Allah" and thus might be offensive.

As this article pointed out, names like "pedophileterrorist" and "hellorapist" were considered fine and inoffensive by the same filter.

This isn't love, it's just cheap entertainment

I recently spent ages looking for a copy of This Is the Day... This Is the Hour... This Is This! by Pop Will Eat Itself. I found a grand total of 0.00000 PWEI albums.

Then the moose gave me one he found in the boot of his car. Naturally enough two days later I found a copy for sale at Real Groovy... but never mind.

I am now looking for any & all PWEI cds I can find. In particular:

Cure For Sanity
The Looks or the Lifestyle
Two Fingers My Friends (esp. the 2cd version)

I wouldn't mind the early EPs, the Radio 1 sessions and the live album, but these are the three I really want. Can anyone help?

Daily Goddamn

Today's Goddamn of the Day is brought to us by the entity sometimes known as Group Five.

Review: Dreamfall - the Longest Journey

This Xbox game is the sequel to the point & click adventure game The Longest Journey. It's a combination of fantasy and science fiction, set in two parallel worlds: a world of magic and a world of science. So far so not very original, but this is an extremely well designed game with an intricate and fascinating story.

First, the bad: the combat and stealth elements of this game are badly implemented and should have been left out.

Now, the good: the voice acting is average-to-great, depending on the character; the characters are well developed and interesting; the visuals are very nice; the sound effects and music are just about perfect.

Now, the ARGH: there's an Empire Strikes Back ending!

Totally enjoyed it, but I'm desperate for the third part to come out. The Norwegian designers have said that this & the third part were designed in tandem, and everything will be cleared up. They better be, or some Norge is getting a punch in the nose!

J.G. Ballard would love this

An article about French people staging road accidents in Spain so they can film them is here.

Here's hoping they all get run over before they provoke any accidents that actually kill other people.

Daily Goddamn

Responsibility gap

There's something I've always wondered:

Taking responsibility for your own actions is commonly said to be a sign of maturity.

America (as an entity) seems to be unwilling to accept any responsibility for the actions of terrorism, despite the fact that most clear-headed pundits see a pretty strong cause-and-effect relationship between American foreign policy and the rise of terrorism. Cf. George W. Bush: "They hate our freedoms" [link] Also cf. the Defense Science Board: "Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies." [link]

America is also often referred to as a young country.

So is there any hope that this young and immature country will actually grow up and accept some responsibility for not only training and arming terrorists, but also creating policies that cause people to hate them?

No disrespect intended to the millions of Americans who actually have a goddamn clue.

As an aside to the "hate our freedom" nonsense, I found this in a review of a comedy album by David Cross:

[Cross] even seemed to have a better handle on the mindset of Osama bin Laden than the Bush administration: "If the terrorists hated freedom, then the Netherlands would be fucking dust." Just a few months later, bin Laden released one of his tapes (not on Sub Pop), saying, "Bush has told you that we do not like freedom. Then why didn't we hit Sweden?" Whoa.

[Link]

Admittedly the (American) writer of the review seems to have confused the Netherlands (containing Holland) with Sweden (not containing Holland).

News? What news?

Where do you get your news?

I get mine from a variety of sources. For world news I have RSS feeds from Al Jazeera and Christian Science Monitor. The latter is good for its own reportage; and the former is good for Reuters feeds (if I'm gonna get the exact same news that most online sources use, I might as well go to an Arab newspaper).

For local news, I rely mostly on Morning Report. (Is that Aaron from Poha in the pic at top? Oops, refreshing changed the picture to some bimbo on the beach. I'm sure it was him!) If only we had any good newspapers.

I also rely heavily on blogs. Names deleted to protect the guilty, but you all now about the moose by now. I browse right-wing and left-wing sites with equal interest - I have still to find anyone who corresponds with my own personal viewpoint though. This whole "the world is a binary left/right schism" idea annoys me to no end.

I don't much like local political blogs - left or right. No Right Turn is probably the best - sorry to damn with faint praise but I call 'em as I see 'em. Besides it's at blogspot which means it's banned at my work. :-P NZ Pundit used to be good for a giggle but is boring now - and I notice that no one even seems to comment there anymore. Russell Brown's Hard News barely qualifies as a blog, but is worth a nosey despite too much waffle.

What do other people look at?

Big terror stopped

Figures that this would happen right after my "terrorism = not terrifying" post. (Because, you know, the whole world revolves around my blog.)

"Experts say that the foiled attack suggests Al Qaeda involvement. Aviation is still a favored target for Al Qaeda acolytes bent on taking terrorism to new heights." [link]

Italics mine. Tee hee.

Music heard recently - the revenge!

Has anyone noticed that the "coming soon" lists at the bottom of these posts don't match the actual reviews I do? Group 5 and Aquaboogie reviews are coming soon. They're just harder to write than a review for:

Christ Illusion by Slayer

Slayer - Christ Illusion

To be honest, I haven't paid any attention to Slayer since Seasons in the Abyss, mostly because that was the last album they released while I was at school - Slayer was popular at Naenae College. As it turns out, Christ Illusion is the first album since Seasons with the original line-up. So I can't comment on the supposed "return to form" of this album, because I missed the supposed "fall from lack of grace".

What I can say is that if you love Slayer, you'll probably love this (though there are always curmudgeons), and if you hate Slayer you'll probably never listen to this.

What we have here is 10 songs making up about 38 minutes of pure aggression and hate. Slayer's usual subject is "God sucks, Christianity is evil, religion kills." The War On Terror (TWOT) provides them with an all-new focus for their aggro screaming, as they skewer both Christianity and Islam, though to be honest they seem a little softer on Islam - they bash God and Jesus specifically but never single out Allah and Mohammed.

Crap guitar solos are such a Slayer standard that they're quite endearing at this point. This is mostly heavy slabs of thrash. I loved it. Maybe you will too.

Highly recommended to people who like this sort of thing. It's the Album of the Week at Tower right now, bless their burnt-black corporate evil hearts.

Daily Goddamn

So far, Michael Upton wins the "most submitted" prize, as well as the "most lethal" prize.

Why not kill your family and use the crime scene photos to make your own Daily Goddamn? I'm sure you can come up with a reason not to.

Article on Nasrallah

This link was provided by the moose at his blog, which is better than mine.

The article is at Christian Science Monitor, which is a very good news source, has won seven Pulitzer prizes, and is known for its excellent Middle East coverage, and has been praised by Project Censored for running factual stories under-represented by mainstream press.

It was established by the founder of Christian Science but is not at all a religious paper. The whole aim of the paper was to stress news over sensationalism, and it continues in this tradition today. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good.

AOL releases private information

Well, sort of. Tons of search queries anyway.

Here is an article by Bruce Sterling about it. It suffers from Sterling's notoriously shonky formatting and quoting, but it's worth a read.

The part at the end, a news article about a specific AOL user's search queries, is funny as well as disturbing.

Afraid of terrorists = victim of scaremongering

This links to a study on how likely people are to actually be killed by terrorists. The linking page claims that in America, death by terrorism is less likely than death by lightning.

The revelation that even in Israel you're four times more likely to be killed by a car than by a terrorist seems to confirm my general distrust of most people's driving ability.

Link via the Gibson who is not Mel.

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn was brought to you by the BBS user formerly known as clubmix.

Did I mention that there's a prize associated with these things?

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn has been brought to you by the submitter Scott A, the number 23, and the defunct brand Death Cigarettes.

Look Out! He's Got A Knife! is a subsidiary of Additive Rich.

Timbaland working with Björk!

Woah. Wonder what that's going to sound like!!

Common

In the song I Got A right Ta, Common raps at one point:

I'm the only cat in hip hop
That can go into a thrift shop
Bring that shit up to the ghetto
And get props

I thought he was joking. But click here to see how he dressed at Dave Chappelle's Block Party.

Some More Music Recently Heard

Is by Princess Superstar
Feedback by Jurassic 5

Princess Superstar - Is

The cover art almost turned me off, but I picked this up on impulse from a sale bin on the grounds that the High and Mighty guested on it, as did Kool Keith.

What a surprise! This white girl can really rap. More, she produces about half the album herself and turns out some pretty good beats. The track with Keith is probably the highlight - I'm so used to thinking "another disappointing Kool Keith gues spot" that he doesn't actually disappoint me anymore, so this hilarious spot was a pleasant highlight. Bad Babysitter is also hilarious. The more angsty tracks are funnier than rock angst.

This is really very good underground-y New York hip-hop, circa 2001. Not only is the Princess flow top-notch, she has a lot of fun flipping stereotypes. The cover made me think "Wow, she's really not as hot as she seems to think she is." After listening, I'm thinking "She probably knows exactly how hot she isn't," which makes the cover funny in retrospect. Clearly a cool and smart chick.

Highly recommended (as if anyone else follows my recommendations).

Jurassic 5 - Feedback

Wow. Feeble. I knew losing superstar DJ Cut Chemist would be a serious blow to these guys, but I figured that remaining DJ Nu-Mark was up to the task.

He isn't. This is way too much old-school throwback and not enough good music right now. There are none of the high-points of their previous three albums (or two albums, an EP, and some other stuff thrown onto the EP to make it look like an album - whatever). Guest producers are all disasters. Getting the Dave Matthews Band was a TERRIBLE idea.

I still hold out hope for Chali 2na's solo album, but it seems that J5 are basically over now. It's a real shame, but you can't expect to rap like Mel Melle in 2006 without irony and get props for it.

Highly Un-recommended.

Coming soon: Group 5, Aquaboogie, Dead Prez, more Princess Superstar.

Succubus (1967)

In the interview on Blue Underground's dvd of this movie director Jess Franco tells us that the story is half his own and half taken from the Necronomicon, which he claims to have found a copy of on the bookshelf of one of the movie's producers.

The movie is about a sexy nightclub performer called Lorna, who acts in shows as a sort of snuff S&M torturer. Her lover, played by Jack Taylor in his first of many collaborations with Franco, is the backer for these shows.

A review of this movie is beyond me. It's one of Franco's "plot? what plot?" erotic nightmares. If you've seen Venus In Furs, Vampyros Lesbos or A Virgin Among the Living Dead: it's one of those. This print is the "uncut American version," which means it's about 8 minutes shorter than the European version which was titled, um, Necronomicon.

The dialogue is extremely pretentious, even for a Franco movie of late '60s vintage. A highlight is a lengthy word association game between Lorna and Howard Vernon as "the Admiral", during which they both hold over-sized magnifying glasses to their faces.

Franco's fetish for showing women licking blood from wounds makes what is probably its first appearance.

You'll either love this movie or fall asleep watching it, or both. Franco is in a class all by himself and it's up to the individual viewer to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Some people still say he's the worst filmmaker of all time. I'm not one of them.

Billy asks:

"Of course, what the fuck is an ignorant beat vs a conscious beat?"

Some discussion here.

"Conscious beats" are beats on conscious rap. "Conscious rap" is usually taken to mean "politicially conscious," as opposed to "not asleep".

Listen to early Talib Kweli; anything by Mos Def; anything by Dead Prez; pretty much anything released on Rawkus Records up until about 2000. Hear that extremely minimalist backing track? That's the stereotype of a conscious beat.

"Ignorant beats" in this case seems to mean beats on commercial rap. Commercial rap is generally about booty, guns, drugs, etc.

Listen to just about anything produced by Timbaland, the Neptunes, Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, or anyone else whose beats back top ten songs. Notice how much more booty-shaking they are.

Now listen to Kanye West. Notice that his subject matter and his flow aren't terribly different from the Conscious Rap guys, while his production is closer to the Ignorant Guys. Then notice that his music sells like a motherfucker, even when he's rapping about things like how the diamonds that the Ignorant Rappers wear are mined by child slave labour.

That's Chris Rock's point: the popular appeal comes from the SOUND, not from the CONTENT. And let's face it: no matter how "Right On!" the lyrics are, if the music sounds crap, it's a crap song.

Daily Goddamn

There was no Daily Goddamn yesterday because it was the 118th anniversary of the first Jack the Ripper murder. R.I.P. Mary Ann Nichols.

Why politically conscious hip-hop doesn't sell

"People don't have a problem with conscious rap; they have a problem with conscious beats. If you make some ignorant beats, you can say all the smart shit you want."
- Chris Rock

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn has been submitted by Scott C. Scott has gone the Image Comics route of formatting his comic in a non-standard format. Even the genius Rob Liefield was never this avant garde.

Daily Goddamn

Today's Daily Goddamn was provided by Billy especially for people who like to say "Alan Moore knows the score!"

Half-Daily Goddamn

Because this morning's was a cheat.

Daily Goddamn

Today's is a bit different, and stolen from some schmoe on this weird internet thingy. (Someone sent me an internet last Friday, it didn't arrive until Monday. That's because it's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.)

Not enough people have sent me their own Daily Goddamns! Samm's given me a good idea though.

Celebrity spotting

Gentille

Saw this movie at the festival last night. It was an ever-so-slightly surreal comedy about an anaethetist trying to decide whether to marry her geologist boyfriend. Thematically rich and often very funny.

The pseudo-word "Buñuelian" is used way too often, but this movie actually had a scene where two people turn up for dinner on the wrong day to find their hosts with no food available and wearing their pajamas. There aren't any Catholic jokes or dream sequences though.

Daily Goddamn

Today's utterly logical Daily Goddamn has been submitted by Andrew Loughnan.