Early Predictions for This Year’s Oscar Nominees

We’re halfway through the year, so I figured I’d throw in my suggestions for some early Best Picture contenders at the Oscars.

- Sean

JULY 08

(Your beloved Master of the Moon can now be found at Twitter.)

The Best Album Covers in My iTunes Library (Hey, why not…)

Taken from my Last.fm page because as Johnny Rotten would put it, “I’m a lazy bastard”. I selected the ten best album covers out of my pitiful iTunes Library and ordered them accordingly. Perhaps, we may be able to determine what makes a great album cover great, or perhaps I will totally waste your time. The latter certainly seem to be more likely . . .

10. Transformer, Lou Reed
A very iconic image. Reed in full glam regalia, guitar in hand and in stark black and white. What’s great about it is that it makes a bold visual statement and communicates the notion to the buyer that Reed’s music is going to have a sense of theatricality to it. Plus, it’s just a damn striking picture.

9. “Heroes”, David Bowie
Bowie was always avant garde but the “Heroes” cover is just something else. In grainy black and white, Bowie strikes a completely bizarre pose. I still have no idea exactly what he’s supposed to be doing but it freaks me out. So y’know, job well done. (The cover for his next album, Lodger, almost made it on this list instead. It shows Bowie lying on the floor with a broken nose. It’s so totally uncharacteristic for the fashionable Mr. Bowie that you have to love it.)

8. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, Arctic Monkeys
I’m actually not a huge fan of the band, but I’ll be damned if that’s not a great album cover. The guy is apparently a friend of the band’s, I’m assuming after a long night of doing things primarily involving drugs, booze and exposed breasts.

7. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
The cover of Wish You Were Here is a perfectly surreal accompaniment to Pink Floyd’s brand of dreamy, epic rock. Gotta love the way the edge of the picture is burning into the white. Fun Fact: the guy on the cover is actually on fire. Ah, the dangerous days before they invented Photoshop . . .

6. Teenager of the Year, Frank Black
I think the cover speaks for itself.

5. Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones
Another very effective shocker and an image that sums up what rock and roll is really all about. The original vinyl featured a real zipper that actually unzips, which is totally awesome, even though it apparently dented the record and ruined it. Fun Fact 2: They wouldn’t let them sell the album with that cover in Spain, so they replaced with an image of a woman’s severed fingers in a can of beans, which is obviously far more tasteful.

4. London Calling, The Clash
This is punk. Based off of the cover of an Elvis album, The Clash replaces The King with Paul Simonon smashing his bass on stage. The “fuck you” message is just so potent and so perfect. Just a defining image, for The Clash and for punk music.

3. Things Fall Apart, The Roots
There are five different covers for Things Fall Apart, all of which are designed to make white listeners feel guilty. The photos used are from the Civil Rights struggle of the 60s and show the Roots’ connection to politics and history, giving you a clear idea of what kind of rap album this is. The only album covers I can think of that create such an impression and force us to question ourselves and society.

2. The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground
A very famous cover for The Velvet Underground’s first album, by Andy Warhol, who was their manager at the time. It’s just a great piece of pop art and The VU should’ve counted themselves lucky to have such an artistic genius provide them with a cover. The banana is in fact a sticker that can be peeled off to reveal the pink banana underneath. (You can’t see it but it says “Peel here and see” at the top.) Unpeeled copies of this album are big collector’s items.

1. Abbey Road, The Beatles
Simple and sweet. This is my idea of album cover perfection. People love Sgt. Pepper’s and it’s certainly a classic but you just can’t beat Abbey Road. The cover was apparently shot quite spontaneously. It’s been parodied a thousand times and it’s also been the source of many “Paul is dead” rumors, mainly claiming significance in the fact that he isn’t wearing shoes, and that Lennon was dressed in all white, representing the undertaker or death or heaven or something. (Lennon was just really into minimalist design at the time.) It’s inspired every idiot who visits Abbey Road to stroll across that zebra crosswalk and yes, I’d totally do it if I went there too. My favorite album and my favorite album cover.

- Sean
JULY 08

“Goddamn, I Wish I Hadn’t Clicked on That”: Why I Hate the Internet

I hate the Internet. Here’s why. (If you’re the kind of person who hears someone else tell them that they should not look at something lest they be scarred for life but do it anyway, you might want to click “back” right now. (I know you’re not going to though.))

Last night, while looking around YouTube, I started checking out shock site reaction videos, to 2girls1cup, Lemon Party, Tubgirl. Y’know, the usual. The funny thing I’ve noticed that I have to admit is that this kind of stuff…just doesn’t shock me much. I have not watched 2girls1cup for various reasons, but most of the shock photos I’ve been subjected to have barely elicited a reaction in me. I’m not an easy person to shock and for some reason, that kind of stuff just seems funny/bizarre to me. What really freaks me out is anything having to do with violence, which I avoid like the plague. At that point I was reminded of a conversation I had with two members at Ultimate Central (I absolutely cannot remember who it was.) where we discussed the BME Pain Olympics. I’m sure those of you who know what that one is just collectively cringed. [member who I cannot remember right now] had already seen it but I and [other member who I cannot remember right now] hadn’t. We talked about it and the one of us who had seen it explained that he thought it wasn’t real.

Remembering this, I decided to googulize the video, with no intention of actually watching it, but just to find out if it’s ever been confirmed to be real or fake. While searching, I almost immediately came across a screenshot . . . and my first reaction was that I could totally see exactly how they would’ve faked it. Then I read various people pointing out things that didn’t make sense about the video: 1. You would absolutely bleed to death before you could apparently post the video on the internet for other’s enjoyment. 2. Any basic high-school anatomy textbook would tell you that the testicles are connected to the body by a thick cord and are wrapped in several layers of nerves and veins. Hence, you wouldn’t be able to pop them out like golf balls from a plastic bag full of ketchup. And then the clincher: the original version of the video actually said at the end that it was all fake and that it had been meant as a parody. Most people just cut out the warning when they started floating it around the internet. What a relief. But I was curious as to what it was a parody of. Here is where I should have turned back.

According to Wikipedia, BME stands for Body Modification Ezine, a website dedicated mainly to fans of tattoos, piercings, and other more unique ways to piss your parents off. But those with special subscriptions to the site can access areas having to do with considerably more extreme forms of body modification, with accompanying videos and pictures. From what I’ve read, it seems like what is simulated in the Pain Olympics video is most likely an exaggeration and that while people do do quite extreme things to themselves, you wouldn’t do something like that unless you were trying to kill yourself. If you wanted it done and wanted to live, it would have to be done surgically.

Anyways, BME is a pay subscription site, which was good because I meant that I couldn’t be tempted to actually visit it. (Considering the way he’s used the theme of extreme body modification in his work, I would bet my soul that Warren Ellis has an account there. This should be enough warning. Look at freaky body mod fetish stuff AND YOU TURN INTO WARREN ELLIS.) However, I saw that link to the “BME Wiki” at the bottom of the Wikipedia article and goddamn it, I had to click on it. I mean how bad could it be, right? It’s not like there’s going to be pictures or anything. Right?

My morbid curiosity led me to go to exactly the pages you would/wouldn’t want to see and…dear god…there were pictures. I could handle it for a few pages, a lot of them weren’t that extreme, but then I had to see what “Subincision” is. What it is…is a procedure that I would rather not try and find the words to describe. And of course, there were photos. But that wasn’t even what got me. It was the section where they started explaining why someone would have it done, what “pleasurable” activities could be pursued once you’ve had such a thing done to you. I finally became to queasy to read on when it began describing how hardcore of a masochist you’d have to be to be able to endure the kind of pain you’d experience just by having any kind of sexual contact once you’ve been “subincised”, and was unable to learn what “head splitting” is. (I could easily guess, but I choose not to.) I mean, I’m a damn hippie, love-everybody liberal and even I was horrified beyond belief. I consider myself pretty open-minded but I can’t come up with a reason why human beings who would be willingly “subincised” deserve to exist on this plane of reality. In fact, I have a working theory that such people are, in fact, Cenobites:

How do they function?? How far have they descended into sexual deviancy that they would do something like that just to get off better? What if you get together with some girl who’s not into that kind of shit and she sees that thing? Wouldn’t she throw up all over you? And wouldn’t you then post it online for others to pleasure themselves to? Who are these people? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE!?!?
Ahem.

And that’s why I hate the internet.

Note that I didn’t include any links to the material mentioned, even to the Wikipedia article. You may foolishly look up “Subincision” on your own time to figure out what it is but I hope that you don’t. I’m getting sick right now, just thinking of it.

Now. Let us cleanse the pallet with a good old fashioned video of thirty or forty people watching the Pain Olympics.

Hehehe.

Now excuse me, I have to play with kittens or hug a teddy bear or something until my soul feels clean again.

- Sean, recently subincised and loving it!!

JULY08