Collected Thoughts 01-20-09

• Incredible human drama from Haiti:

• (On the other hand...)
  

• Ann Powers' take on the Coachella bill is (naturally) terrific. My thoughts...
  
  
  1. This is the second year in a row I've actively liked every top-billed headliner.
  2. The B-list on this bill is outstanding.
     
  3. Friday has the fewest acts that interest me (Jay-Z, The Specials, Echo and the Bunnymen, Public Image Ltd., LCD Soundsystem, Wale) and the most acts that make me spit (Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, Grizzly Bear, She and Him, Yeasayer, The Whitest Boy Alive)
  4. Yes, I will go see Coheed and Cambria. You can stop reading this blog now, if you want to.
  5. If Sly and the Family Stone actually follow through with their commitment to play then I will eat my underpants.
  6. A big, huge congratulations to Local Natives for making the bill. I first saw them a year ago. Great musicians, incredibly friendly folks, worthy of the praise.
  7. I still maintain that The Happy Hollows and / or The Henry Clay People would absolutely win a tent crowd at Coachella. I'm always astonished at how a handful of lesser-known Brooklyn bands always get a nod while the Echo / Spaceland breeding ground, so close to the polo fields, gets little love. I wish Goldenvoice would take a chance on one of those bands, even for a noon slot.
  8. I have lots of time to make (and constantly revise) my Ten Most Excited to See lists. Next Collected Thoughts post, perhaps.
     

• Welcome to Team Happy Hollows, You Ain't No Picasso.

• OK Go wrote an open letter to their fans. I downloaded a couple OK Go songs in 2002, and that's about the extent of my interest in the band. But that letter reveals something I did not know: the reason major labels won't let you embed music videos is because embedded plays don't go toward their share of the YouTube ad dollars.
  
  (It's funny to read the guys from OK Go rationalize their position. "Guys, we love our fans and we really think we deserve to be rich for being musicians, so, um, damn the man, right?!")

• We Listen For You nails the new Spoon record.
  
  I've always felt Spoon was over-rated. You don't "know" the people in Spoon the way I feel like I "know" Malkmus or Karen O or Mac McCaughan. Transference again fails to connect with me.

• =W= v =VH=
  

• Little Round Mirrors is a new blog where John King, the author, is revisiting and reviewing every film in his DVD collection. Put it in your feed.
  
  King was my editor at the Ball State Daily News and is the guy who gave me a column in that paper, a little column that was called Classical Geek Theatre.
  

• The new Spider-Man film will be directed by Mark Webb (500 Days of Summer) and is allegedly budgeted at $80 million.
  
  They say they're going off the Ultimate continuity (fine) and that the story will focus on a high school boy with the secret he could have stopped his uncle's death (also fine). But I don't want a Marvel Smallville, either. Unlike many superheroes, who Spider-Man is when he wears the mask is compelling. Raimi missed it and I fear Webb will miss it too, albeit in a different way.

• News on the Captain America film. (!!!!!)

• News on Conan the Barbarian. (Apparently Nikki deleted my comment, probably because it was too nerdy.)
  

• The movie trailer for Tekken, a film based on the arcade fighter, is out. It looks like the best-ever film adaptation of a fighter videogame. I know that's not saying much, but consider that fighting games have virtually no plot and nearly all character background is loosely implied. (Please not I am not saying it looks good.)
  

• YES.

• Horror of Horrors. KILL IT WITH FIRE.

• Nightmare fuel.

• First-person Tetris. (Have excedrin on hand)

• A Pakistani paper thinks the USA has RUINED EVERYTHING.
  

• Food printing. Cyberpunkarific.

• William S. Burroughs' stuff.
  

• GQ ran an investigative report on former Indianapolis Colts receiver Marvin Harrison.
  
  I named my cat after Marvin Harrison.
  
  If true, the report is heartbreaking. It's also fascinating. Most pro athletes that commit violent crimes have a trail. Drug use, previous convictions on illegal gun possession, a few assault spats... but Marvin, despite his family history, apparently avoided any kind of entanglement like this up until the incident. No matter who you believe, not matter what you think happened, it's weird.
  
  Even if he did it I hope they retire his number.
  

• We tortured three men to death at Gitmo, then we covered it up. The blood is on all of our hands.

• On a lighter note, Obama the Musical.
  

• I'm curious to see if the Republicans in the Senate will continue their Oppose Anything Agenda now that the mythical super-majority is ended. I say "mythical" because it was never a "Liberals can pass anything" majority with senators like Bayh and (spit) Lieberman.
  
  I hope history records that they offered virtually no ideas to save America from the financial crisis. They offered virtually no ideas to push-back health insurers to get Americans care. They prevented Obama's administration from being effective by blocking an astonishing number of nominees (who were not extremely liberal) for no reason other than spite.
  
  I maintain the opinion that Obama, Pelosi, and few others (not absence of Harry Reid) are the only people in Washington serious about governance in the period that is in most need of governance since I've been alive. "Obama missed the main issue?" He saved the autos, the banks are paying back their bailouts, and the stimulus indisputably has saved us from recession (even if it could have done more).
  
  The Massachusetts special election not a referendum on Obama so much as it is an illustration of how Obama can't get his message or tangible facts above the cable news cycle din. I don't think we can look to the constitution to fix this governing problem; for all their incredible foresight, a cyberpunk future was never in the wildest dreams of the most imaginative deist colonist revolutionary.
  
  I wish I could use my power as a citizen to hit-back at the mega-media conglomerates whose corporations determine our government's behavior. Protests won't do it. I already stopped watching their television, opting for YouTube excerpts. I'm not sure how a single voter (or millions of voters) can fit in a corporately-governed United States.