I was priviledged tonight to accompany a friend of mine, another former Nebraskan and a recently transplanted Angeleno working for a prominent entertainment periodical to a screening of the 8-time Oscar Nominated film “Inglorious Basterds”. An immense fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work of course i’d seen it before but what made the screening special was the venue and a few particular guests in attendance, namely the director himself, co-star Eli Roth (director of Cabin Fever, Hostel), producer Lawrence Bender and a few Holocaust Survivors.
Last March I recommended Echo Park dance troupe/electrosiezure We Are The World as a band “You Should Know” and really, this recommendation is for your own good if you feel that music needs an artistic boost removed from the cult of celebrity currently seized ahold of iTunes. Finally the Echo Park quarted have made a hauntingly spectacular video for standout track “Clay Stones” in anticipation of their first release, a single of the song available today via IAMSOUND (still saying pre-sale). The Vinyl will be out 2/23 on Manimal.
And as I’ve said before if you get the chance to catch their kenetic live show (of which they play very few) consider yourself very lucky. Their myspace page indicates an upcoming February residency here in Los Angeles but a venue has yet to be revealed. Rest assured I will be making as many trips to Silverlake/Echo Park this month as necessary.
This is a totally weird video for Bob Dylan’s “Must Be Santa” off of his Christmas In The Heart charity album. For the first 30 seconds I was a bit horrified by Dylan’s awkward movements and straight hair but the song is pretty rad. I like it more than most of the newer Dylan stuff I’ve heard.
I guess Jews have the best Christmas songs.
Proceeds from Chirstmas In The Heart will provide 500,000 meals to school children in the developing world through the World Food Programme, 15,000 meals to homeless people in the United Kingdom through Crisis and more than 4 million meals to 1.4 million families in America through Feeding America.
Opens OCTOBER 30TH? Where has the ADVERTISING been for this? NAMEDROP ALERT: I met Clifton Collins, Jr. a few weeks ago in a VIP area and he was a totally nice guy. Seems like he’s had weird facial hair for a lot of his movies lately! I’m looking forward to this one!
I posted about this event this time last year and a lot of people have been searching for it lately (at least 63 of you today alone!). So I figured I would repost with the new information so you are privy to the new shit.
On Octobre 24th head over to Hollywood Forever Cemetery (6000 Santa Monica Blvd) from 4 – 11pm for Dia De Los Muertos. It’s $10 and they make it a point to tell you No Dogs, No Coolers and…No Skateboards? Im sure there has been some axle grinding on Valentino’s Crypt or something to prompt this rule. It’s not like you can ride very smoothly on the cemetery’s driveway or anything.
Be sure to put a sugar skull on Johnny Ramone’s Statue.
This has been my favorite blog for a long time now. In fact, many of the recurring segments on Deadlantern.com were patterned from stuff I saw on this site. It’s chock full of everything that AvantTrash readers would find interesting: musicians, beautiful women, artists, fashion, etc.
I encourage all of you to make it a daily visit.
And yes, Joan Blondell is the goddess. Be cultured and watch Three on a Match.
Easily one of the greatest music videos ever. “Closer” combined so many detailed pieces of ephemera and was so stylistically influenced by niche artists (Joel Peter Witkin, Francis Bacon, The Brothers Quay…) that it itself became an original piece of art beyond the medium. WickedHalo has an amazing deconstruction of the videos elements and production which was even reposted on Kanye’s blog.
Remind those stupid motherfuckers that it isn’t real. None of it. Your “holy books” are dangerously outdated. Look at me marginalizing what you’ve wasted THOUSANDS of years on by putting my “you-are-all-fucking-loony” quotes around it. The whole fucking thing. None of it’s real. None of it’s holy. If anything the whole world is holy. People are holy. Love people. Not Allah or Yaweh or God or Mohammed. The Earth is your God. You came from it, you couldn’t survive without it and most importantly YOU CAN SEE IT! Boom! If you want to fight, how about you fight pollution and poaching and everything else that harms the only reason you exist. There are no virgins, there is no heaven. Virgins usually just lay there anyway. You are just an asshole with a gun, an asshole with a bomb, an asshole on a rug 5 times a day, an asshole with a bagel and a lot of money and bad sideburns. I hate you all because you do NOTHING to help the world or ANYBODY besides yourselves! You fucking selfish assholes.
The holidays are a wonderful time to vent the frustrations you’ve spent a year repressing. I think I should release mine here on something that doesn’t really matter instead of on my family today. Here goes:
A true genius, philosopher, cynic, optimist, humanist, free-thinker and brilliant comedian. The natural evolution from Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin. Had he not died of cancer, William Melvin Hickswould be 47 years old today.
I know it’s the obvious thing to say, but if I lived in Montana I’d probably want to kill myself too. What is there to do their besides go to Yellowstone, drive a pickup and be a gay cowboy? Sure they don’t really have a speed limit but what difference does that make when you don’t really have anywhere to go?
That no speed limit thing should be the left 2 lanes of the 101 and 405, am I right Angelenos? High Five!
If you go anywhere rural… they are totally into God. I guess it’s because they have nothing better to do than feel guilty about the few minor pleasures they take in their little lives. Or maybe it’s because they are so fucking bored with there being nothing better to do than get drunk that they hope beyond reason that after you die you go somewhere that all of the attractive single women didn’t get the fuck out of after High School.
In the Inland California suburban wasteland of Rancho Cucamonga, where people love that their city sounds like a Bob Hope punchlin, pro-religious billboards are everywhere because, you guessed it, there is nothing better to do in the Inland Empire. So when a billboard saying, “Imagine No Religion” is put up by the Wisconsin group the Freedom from Religion Foundationover 90 Complaints from scared little sheep started bleeting in to their city government (as if they have anything to do with anything!) and the city asked the sign company if their was a way to have the billboard removed. Eventually it was taken down and a refund was issued to the FFRF.
30 Rock is still the best comedy on network TV. I know it, most of my liberal facebook friends know it and now Jim Henson’s golden disembodied soul even seems to know it. Everyone seems to know it but YOU America (for shame). I’m not sure how many kids will grasp the concept of this sketch considering their Joe Sixpack and Jane Boxwine parents probably can’t (My Name is Earl, fucking really?). And because I somehow I feel I am it’s intended demographic, this must be great!
The Times reported 10,000-12,000 supporters who marched on downtown L.A. in opposition of Prop 8 last Saturday; and it was pretty fucking amazing.
Speakers included Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, openly gay LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center Chief Executive Officer Lorri Jean, West Hollywood City Councilman John Duran, civil rights lawyer Connie Rice, actor and F.A.I.R. member Darryl Stephens, and actresses Ricki Lake and Xena: Warrior Princess (Lucy Lawless) who gave her warcry and said she rode the “soul train” to the protest.
Most of us of course took our neglected subway to the protest which made for an awesome photo of thousands of people coming out of the tunnel and into the blazing hot NOVEMBER sun.
We were hoping there would be a riot, Justin wanted a photo of himself being blasted by a firehose atop an overturned police car. Unfortunately Homelard Security was there to keep us civil with the friendly reminder of waterboarding.
It looks like Prop 8 is on its way to the state supreme court where it will hopefully be told to fuck off and die like any god that ever existed would have wanted it to do. So hopefully we won’t have to burn down all the mormon churches. But we should probably do that anyway.
Now enjoy some photos of the 1st Amendment in action.
via UCB: Prop 8 passed. Are you gonna sit around and sulk or are you gonna do something about it? Come learn what you can do next at this comedy show filled with sketches, stand-up, and videos inspired by the insipid Prop 8.
Informative. Hilarious. Cathartic.
Hosted by: James Adomian
Featuring:
Steve Agee (Sara Silverman Program), Heather Campbell, Jackie Clarke, Convoy, Drew Droege, Colton Dunn, Janeane Garofalo, A Kiss From Daddy, Nicol Paone, Ryan Perez, Jennie Pierson, Amy Rhodes, Mike Rose, Bryan Safi, Ben Siemon, Chris Farah, Amanda Sitko, A video by Jonathan Smith, Pete Zias, and more!
via Facebook Event: This is a nation wide event. Every major city in America (and some around the world) will be protesting on 11/15 10:30 PST (or 1:30 EST). http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/
Locally we will be gathering at LA city hall 200 N. Spring St at 10:30am on 11/15. All the latest information on the LA event can be found at http://protest8la.wordpress.com/
