Since U been gone.

The new GIRL TALK album, "Feed the Animals", is available for download HERE!

I put together this video to illustrate GT's mashup wizardry in one of the tracks off the new album (track 12, "Here's the Thing").

[Watch it directly on YOU TUBE and choose the option to "Watch in High Quality": more of the text is legible that way.]

DON'T CALL HIM A DJ! He's a sound-collagist, okay?

Read about plunderphonics...

Friends You Leave Behind

From The Onion News Briefs:

BROOKLYN, NY—After taking a group of visiting hometown friends out with the circle of friends he has made since moving to New York from Hingham, MA three years ago, 25-year-old paralegal Andy Stein reported Tuesday that his friends from home are "pretty embarrassing." "I guess I never noticed it then, but they're all really loud, they complained about how expensive New York beer is the whole night, they kept quoting that 'More Cowbell' sketch from like 10 years ago, and every time I introduced them to one of my coworkers, they tried to give them a fist pound," Stein said. "Plus, they all still watch wrestling." When reached for comment, Stein's childhood neighbor Jake Mikita said that Stein's new friends were "a bunch of fucking pussies, but nah, they're pretty good guys."

Share the Love

I love this beer commercial, directed by the great Todd Haynes.

The Sloppy Grift

Begin with the initial mystery-guest story.

Continue here.

And finish the tale of Prescott Hahn, fake hedge fund manager.

From other accounts I've heard, this might be an epidemic. A plague of liars descending upon the party scene, Old Testament style.

Fucking Millenials, man...

Puzzle Mansion

I wanna be a rich bastard with a creepy fucking Puzzle House!

(... or the gig of writing that movie.)

Honestly, when you're rich enough to commission whimsical architecture just for the fuck of it—in NEW YORK GODDAMN CITY, where a shit-hole in the wall costs a veritable fortune—you've gotta be making some sort of deal with the devil.

I've always thought that what this city needs more of is spoiled-rotten rich kids with a tumescent sense of entitlement.

Sociopath House

I know just how to whisper...
And I know just how to cry...

I know just where to find the answers...
And I know just how to lie...

I know just how to fake it...
And I know just how to scheme...

I know just when to face the truth...
And then I know just when to dream...

And I know just where to touch you...
And I know just what to prove...

I know when to pull you closer...
And I know when to let you loose...

And I know the night is fading...
And I know that times gonna fly...

And I'm never gonna tell you everything I've got to tell you,
But I know Ive got to give it a try...

And I know the roads to riches...
And I know the ways to fame...

I know all the rules
And then I know how to break em
And I always know the name of the game...

The Incredible Billy West

A.V. Club interviews the amazing Billy West.

I advise you to click on the audio bits: they make the piece.

Robotics for Lonely Men

REUTERS tells us:
"[SEGA] has produced a 38 cm (15 inch) tall robotic girlfriend that kisses on command, to go on sale in September for around US$175, with a target market of lonely adult men."

Introducing EMA (Eternal Maiden Actualisation).

I don't know... I guess it looks pretty cool and all but how do I stick my cock in that thing?

Hey, Japan: you're not doing any favors for Japanese men.

All Day Wii Dream About Sex

NSFW Alert, boys and girls!

But who works on Saturdays?

Ready? Warned?

Okay... nothing like a nice sex-addled weekend Butcherhouse post...


Playboy model Jo Garcia shot a lovely advertisement for the Wii Fit game...

Playboy's Jo Garcia Pwns Wii Fit Girl
Uploaded by TheNin9mm

I can't get enough... I can't stop watching... help me...

Self-Righteous Games

Essay on Funny Games:

... I have some problems with how Haneke describes the project of Funny Games. In interviews, he has time and again said that it is intended to educate its viewers into being conscious of the moral problems inherent in watching horror films. He sees it essentially as a didactic lesson - a commentary on movie violence that will shock complacent horror spectators out of their passive relationship to cinema, restoring their endangered conscience by daring them to keep watching; as he says: “Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn’t need the film, anyone who stays does”.

This seems to me a hugely pious, arrogant, and unintelligent argument, and one that reveals that Haneke doesn’t know very much about horror films or their audiences at all (and he has indeed admitted that he doesn’t watch very much horror cinema).

I didn't care for Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES when I saw it years ago, on VHS.

Watching his shot-for-shot American remake on DVD reminded me what I hated about it.

I agree with the linked essay above, though I err on disliking the film. The movie revels in the conventions of the genre while it tries to chastise the viewer for feeling anything for the artifices. It turns pompous and tiresome. Haneke's idea of the passive spectator shoveling down violence like potato chips is ultimately insulting. It flaunts ignorance: about how people watch movies and about how drama works.

Under Land

"Under Land" is the working title of a new project I'm kicking around, with my artist friend Lucas W. Dimick.

It has nothing to do with the image above. (Or does it?)

It is a horror film. A different kind of horror film.

It is a side-project. A pet monster, to adore and nurture and raise.

More on this when we're ready to talk.

Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!

Today, Curious Reader, you shall suffer a small rant.

YOU TUBE is going to the fucking dogs.

Yes, it's true. I'd intended to embed a little YOU TUBE video into today's entry. Had in fact planned this a few days in advance.

Funny thing about YOU TUBE videos is that they exist and then they are yanked, and you can never tell when that is going to fucking happen. Why do all the lovely Edens on the internet get corrupted?

Oh, that coppery taste of hate.

Well, now that I'm forced to talk to you... I've got more news, I really do. Just can't talk about anything concrete just this second. I've got the sapling of a new idea I've been nurturing. The working title is "Under Land".

Stan Winston Has a Posse

April 7, 1946 – June 15, 2008
Stan Winston gets a posse, far too young.

Fucking lame, I say.

Tim Russert dies too young, now Stan Winston. Do we really need a third? Can't we skip it this time? Leave it at two?

The Lost Meeting

Isn't it a wee bit cheap to just post a YOU TUBE video on a blog and have that count as a new and unique entry?

YES.

But I've been busy getting some things off the ground. So I leave you this trail of breadcrumbs to remind you that I'm still here.

Keep following. It'll be worth it in the end, I promise.

Suicide Benefits

Can you purchase life insurance and then immediately commit suicide?

INTERNET SEZ THIS.

Well then... how would you make a murder look like a suicide?

Did you know that before the internet, people had to go to a "Library" to conduct research?

Who cares about accuracy if it sounds plausible enough?

YOU FUCKED UP

You fucked up!
You bitch!
YOU REALLY FUCKED UP!

You fucked up!
You fuckin nazi whore!

Well, you dicked me over—but now you'll pay!
You fucked up...
Aaaahhh!!

What to do with the lower classes

The Shout-Out

On the set of their "Friday the 13th" reboot, the Platinum Dunes guys gave a little status report on their upcoming slate.

Excerpt from the article:

So what’s the future hold for Platinum Dunes? It’s not all remakes, that much is obvious. ”We’re now trying to integrate an original movie in between the remakes,” Fuller assured us. ”We’re pretty sure our next movie will be an original called The Butcherhouse Chronicles. We don’t want to stop making horror movies, and if they’re going to keep offering us these properties, we’re not going to pass on them, but if we can put something fresh and original then maybe in 20 years they can remake our remakes and remake our originals...” he joked, ”That’s the goal!”

"Pretty sure", eh? I like those odds!

They Eat MEAT!!!

The good news is that I managed to qualify for health benefits through the Writers Guild for another year!

The troubling news...?

I somehow managed to get trapped into joining the Writers Guild "Activities Committee".

I have no idea what this means. But I'm afraid.

the cake is a lie

I know not everyone's a gamer out there.

I'm a gamer and I could've easily missed PORTAL. As it is, I'm sickeningly late to the party.

Better late than never, though. Because the game is unequivocally brilliant.

What I'm particularly impressed with is how the game—which is largely a puzzle game—actually builds tension as you progress. It's so amazingly written. It manages to pull off this darkly dystopian comic tone that I haven't really seen since the old Interactive Text adventures like Planetfall.

It pulls all of this off with remarkable economy.

There is also an intriguing article out there that suggests that "Portal" is for Lesbians.

I'd love to gush on. It's the sort of game you want to talk about but you hate to spoil it for people who haven't played it first-hand. At the same time, non-gamers aren't likely to play it no matter how much praise is heaped upon it.

It's a little frustrating that MORE people just aren't going to experience this thing. Because it's fucking awesome.

Strangers When We Meet

I loved "The Strangers".

Opening day, there was a rowful of high school boys sitting behind me in the theater and I was bracing for a steady stream of snarky, sarcastic comments. The kind of unasked-for audience commentary that you're forced to suffer in these types of movies. (People like to prove that they aren't scared.)

Instead, these boys were screaming their fool heads off. Several times, I heard one whisper to another, "This is the scariest movie I've ever seen!"

I'll say it was certainly the tensest film I've seen in movie theaters in quite a while. Big, big ups to writer/director Bryan Bertino.

Over the weekend, I started reading some of the negative critiques of the movie, which was a fucking bummer. Yes, I know, the internet LOVES to complain. And the internet particularly loves complaining about horror movies. For a genre that's so popular, it's strange that it's almost impossible to unite people behind a movie.

I love the economy of "The Strangers". It's not reinventing the wheel. It takes the conventions and plays them through very effectively. Most of the horror movies that get put out there can't manage that. It doesn't try to be more than it is. A simple, elegantly-rendered thrill-ride.

Diary of a Jack Sparrow

My friend Jenny forwarded me this great article, written by a guy who used to work as a "Jack Sparrow" at Disneyland...

Excerpt:

I had a MySpace page as Jack Sparrow, and I asked if I could keep that. They said no. Two days later an assistant found a blog I’d written about auditioning. They said, “You need to take that blog down in two hours or you’ve lost your job.” They said, “You cannot give out information about auditioning for Jack Sparrow.” I also had to sign documents that stated if I was in the park and out of costume, I could not tell people that I played Jack Sparrow. I was told that the thing for employees to say was, “I am friends with Jack Sparrow.” I was worried I couldn’t do the character at Renaissance Faires anymore. But as long as I didn’t make money, I was told, I could put on my own costume outside the park.

Amateur Lessons

Excerpt from this great article:

When the cheering was done and the MC reported the results... the youngest member (of the losing team) was stunned and almost stomped off the stage in disgust, anger and tears... The audience started to boo—mostly because we had to crush the hopes of some very talented kids in the zero-sum, forced-choice format of the Apollo talent show...

The MC immediately began castigating the audience. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare!" he shouted. "She has to learn, they have to learn, you don't always win. The show goes on and you remain professional. Don't disrespect them or this stage by booing in disappointment. They will have other days. This was not their day."

Watch Out for Millennials

"Millennials"... are the generation born between 1980 and 1995...

They're excessively coddled, harbor a monstrous sense of entitlement and are entirely void of any concept of loyalty.

Their blood is like ice water. They have no souls. They murder homeless people for fun.

I have a suspicion that all of this is bullshit, but it was on "60 Minutes" so it must be legit...

Beware the Millenials!