Monday, August 31, 2009

Pitchfork's shitty videos list

The official Taste My Kids "20 Best Promo Videos Ever" list will be continuing in due time, but I'd just like to quickly post something that went up yesterday, just so everyone can know what a shitty list of "Best videos" looks like..

P2K: The Top 50 Music Videos of the 2000s

This is Pitchfork's best videos of the decade. There are 2 huge differences between the Taste My Kids list and Pitchfork's.. the first huge difference is that no one will ever read the one posted here, whereas everyone and their mother reads Pitchfork. And the second huge difference is that you can't fuck with the Taste My Kids list, whereas you most certainly can fuck with their list. Because it really sucks hard. Weezer's "Pork And Beans" is their #3 best video of the decade. And I really don't need to go any further than that, because I've already made my point.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Tarantino top 20 1992-2009

I'm not sure why this happened, but Quentin Tarantino listed his favorite movies since 1992. Good choices.. good but not great.. I have to say I love that at least half of these are mainstream American movies, although I still consider Dazed & Confused overrated..

And Friday is in here even though I remember Friday as having an especially terrible ending.. but still, I love that it's here.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

20 Best Promo Videos Ever (Part Two)

Back again for another round..

#15 Metallica "One" (Bill Pope & Michael Solomon, 1988)

After their frantic thrash debut Kill 'Em All, Metallica spent the remainder of the decade releasing one of rock's classic album trilogies, highlighted by their career-centerpiece Master Of Puppets. The third part of this trilogy was 1988's ...And Justice For All, which had no choice but to be considered a let down after Master Of Puppets raised the bar so high.

This isn't to suggest Justice is anything but outstanding.. It was their last truly definitive moment, and the last time they truly mattered to metal. But it was also Metallica's first big let down to their fans, partially because of their shift towards slightly more mainstream verse-chorus rock. But it was also because before Cliff Burton died, they stated that they would never make a music video. It's hard to say if fans were more pissed off with the actual shooting of the video than they were with the hypocrisy. Either way, the band hadn't gone to shit just yet, and "One" currently stands as the single official promotional video that represents this band's most classic era. They should also be given credit for their first video pushing the 8 minute mark and still receiving heavy MTV airplay alongside Madonna and New Kids On The Block.

There's a version of this video that only includes the band's black & white performance, but right from the start, MTV always played the version with the clips from Johnny Got His Gun, even though many probably considered this version slightly more tedious. However, "One," complete with movie clips, is a far better visual representation of the book than its film adaptation. (And yes, I've read the book, which is good, and seen the movie, which is kinda awful..)



(Just fyi, this is NOT the version of "One" that used to air on MTV.. I guess there were more than 2 edits of this, but unfortunately the one posted here is not nearly as effective as the original.. and it seems this version is nowhere to be found on the world wide web. Sad.)

#14 Aphex Twin "Come To Daddy" (Chris Cunningham, 1997)

One truly amazing aspect of "Come To Daddy" is that both Richard D. James and Chris Cunningham were shooting more for silliness and jokes than the terrifying doomfest it ultimately became. Two things Cunningham pointed out on his DVD that I love about "Come To Daddy": #1 It makes no sense why a little old lady would have such a "monsterous, aggressive, horse-sized dog." And #2 Some of the kids are midgets with masks, which is hilarious because if you look closely they're "little hairy-armed kids" with an Aphex Twin face. Maybe there's more jokes here than I realized..



#13 Wax "California" (Spike Jonze, 1995)

One of the most definitive images of 90's MTV, and one of Beavis's favorite videos.. A simple tale of a man flagging down a bus, and the little girl bored out of her mind watching the whole thing. Wikipedia claims that Tim and Lars from Rancid are somewhere in this video...



#12 The Pharcyde "Drop" (Spike Jonze, 1996)

Spike Jonze has a knack for choosing very distinct images that always seem to perfectly accompany the music.. The backwards effect in this video was actually perfected by Michel Gondry's clip for Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water." However, the final minute of "Drop" is a climax that blows it back into stratospheric territory.



#11 UNKLE feat Thom Yorke "Rabbit In Your Headlights" (Jonathan Glazer, 1998)

This video has already been analyzed to death.. I can't think of a single original thought about it, so instead I'll get all lame and nostalgic.. There aren't many videos that can take me back like this one, right to the first time I saw it on 120 Minutes around 1AM sometime in December 1998 in my mom's basement.. I had never seen anything like it.. I wasn't really paying attention initially, and then that first car strike was so unexpected I couldn't look away until the end.. one of the first cases I can remember of truly being wow'd by a video.. In fact, I'm pretty sure I whispered "wow" to myself. But that's the thing.. If you know what to expect it may not blow you away the first time, so I've already said too much...


"Embedding disabled by request." :(


Part 3 coming soon...

20 Best Promo Videos Ever (Part One)

I found a good list to post, but it requires lots of youtube links so I decided to break it into four parts, 5 videos at a time. "Keeping 'em wanting more" is good showmanship. I'm also a fan of "show, don't tell."

Just so anyone reading this can know for the future, you cannot fuck with this list. These are the best videos ever shown on MTV. Everything on this list was released between the 80's and 2005, which is when MTV actually would have been airing music.

Promo videos since 2005, including those which received the most praise, have pretty much all been shallow and cliched, with meaningless CGI effects, vapid celebrity cameos, tired computer animation, and every other imaginable cliche that's being used for the millionth fucking time. The small handful of exceptions from the past 5 years that I can recall would include the following:

"Rubber Johnny" (Aphex Twin) |Youtube|
"The Denial Twist" and "My Doorbell" (The White Stripes) |Youtube (Denial)| |Youtube (Doorbell)|
"Keine Lust" (Rammstein) |Youtube|
"Prime Time Of Your Life" (Daft Punk) |Youtube|
"Over And Over (Hot Chip) |Youtube|
"Sensual Seduction" (Snoop Dogg) |Youtube|
"Kids" (MGMT) |Youtube|

Besides these few, the best videos since 2005 are no longer those paid for by record label advances or funded by record sales. Youtube has allowed both bands and fans to launch a kind of DIY-era of promo clips. We personally enjoyed Radiohead's performance videos from around the release of In Rainbows such as their cover of New Order's "Ceremony", or Tobacco from Black Moth Super Rainbow who released an entire DVD of random VHS weirdness to accompany the Fucked Up Friends LP.

This list also unintentionally excludes videos released before the launch of MTV, for no other reason than simply they're not very interesting compared to what followed. Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and The Beatles "I Am The Walrus" were among the first that seemed to explore beyond mere musical performance or compiling images of bands lipsynching while strolling around various landscapes. Much later, David Bowie's "Ashes To Ashes" and Sex Pistols' "My Way" continued pushing forward, soon before MTV's official launch.

The videos that currently receive the most praise from MTV's first 5 years are "Thriller," "Sledgehammer" and of course A-ha's "Take On Me," which will probably end up in every major publication's "top 10 videos ever" for the rest of eternity. However, it won't be in this one because we no longer consider it exciting in compared to what followed. And honestly, it confused me as a 6-year-old MTV fan. It reminds me of confusion.

Enough malarkey. Let's get to this so I can sleep.

#20 Mr. Oizo "Flat Beat" (Quentin Dupieux, 1999)

This video stars Flat Eric. I don't know a lot about his history, but the clip suggests his professional life is quite successful and that he works very hard to keep his company strong. "Flat Beat" taught me the virtues of perseverance. This video may be the apex of meaningless non-Henson puppetry. In fact, puppetry and minimalism are so rarely used together, and they're such an effective combination.



#19 My Chemical Romance "I’m Not Okay (I Promise)" (Marc Webb, 2004)

This was an obvious fluke since it inspired a turd-pile of videos that followed in its path, all of which included one, some, or all of the elements from this video. The turd-pile I'm referring to includes every other MCR video and all the others from every band that got radio spins as a result of MCR's success. (i.e. "Dance Dance," "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," etc.)

This video was different, since it's the only case in which these elements congealed correctly. Yes, the song and video are both trying way too hard to be anthemic, but in this one specific case it made perfect sense.

"I'm Not Okay" is essentially the exact opposite of The Strokes' brilliantly simple "Last Night" video, which was also a "first of its kind" earlier in the decade. Both videos were thrown in heavy MTV rotation in hopes of creating a "new Nirvana" type of buzz, attempting to launch a new subgenre to take over alt-rock stations. And in a weird way, The Strokes did become the Nirvana of neo-garage in the same way My Chemical Romance became the Nirvana of "whiny post-post-emo with huge pop hooks."

The video was also a fluke for Marc Webb, who later went on to direct no more good videos and an overhyped recently released movie called (500) Days Of Summer, one of those fake-indie movies that's not actually distributed by an independent film company while catering to Garden State/Juno fans and probably has a soundtrack with 75% boring indie-rock and 25% new wave from the 80's (and wouldn't you know it - dead fucking right on target as usual. I swear I didn't look before that prediction.) Moving on.

Whatever, no apologies. Take it or leave it, this is what a great video looks like:



(Youtube did not allow the original edit of the video to be posted, but somehow it made it onto Spike TV's official website.

#18 Nirvana "Heart Shaped Box" (Anton Corbjin, 1993)

Wayne & Garth summed it up nicely:




#17 Yo La Tengo "Sugarcube" (Phil Morrison, 1997)

"Sugarcube" is a favorite among music nerds and Mr. Show fans, although its appeal is actually way more universal than that, since I knew nothing about Mr. Show when I was 17, and I was a fairly pathetic excuse for a "music nerd" in comparison to people I've met since then. And yet despite my ignorance, this was still one of my most cherished discoveries after I became addicted to 120 Minutes in that crazy summer of '97.



#16 Blur "Coffee + TV" (Hammer & Tongs, 1999)

Poor little Milky. This video is so cute, and yet so dark. Some really scary shit blocks Milk's path from reaching Graham Coxon. I'm still somewhat scared by the last 45 seconds, in which Hammer & Tongs decided to also create a visual of the 2 angel-milks flying to the sound of the interlude heard between "Coffee + TV" and "Swamp Song" on Blur's 13 LP. It still gives me some chills. but I mean, it's so cute. How could anyone with a soul dislike this video?



(P.S. According to the wikipedia entry on Blur's 13 the character is actually named "Milky." I was just guessing before. I had no idea!)

Part 2 coming soon!

Nothing is happening.. so I'll write about Game Show Network

I'm having trouble thinking of anything to write about but I was planning on just posting music lists and youtube videos here anyway.. so I guess it's not such a big deal.

I was going to write something about how Game Show Network stopped showing all their older programming like Press Your Luck (now replaced with a newer boring version called Whammy!) and even stopped showing Lingo which was one of their best original shows for years.. And instead they're now focusing on bullshit like Deal Or No Deal reruns.. and then I was going to quickly mention how I'll always miss those classic episodes of Match Game they used to show on Saturday mornings with Richard Dawson and Betty White and Charles Nelson Reilly.. they pretty much always had the same 6 celebrities in every episode, and they would always go on these tediously amazing joke-tangents that ended up delaying the game from being played for minutes at a time..



Yeah anyway.. I'm not gonna post what I original wrote about it cos it was boring. I'll find some old lists or somethin..

Sunday, August 23, 2009

I actually bought an album today (Or: Kellii Scott's new band just fucked my face)

This is a first for me.. I've never paid for a download LP before.. I was in Boston the other day playing drums and I met a friendly dude who said he was in a band called Brontosaur.. I'm pretty sure this is their myspace and it's good stuff. The singing reminds me of Steve Albini. I'm into it.

However this is not the band whose album I downloaded.

Here's what happened.. while I was searching for that myspace a few hours ago, I found ANOTHER band with the same name from Los Angeles.. Turns out this is Kellii Scott's new band.. Kellii used to be in Failure, and Blinker The Star and apparently was in Veruca Salt at some point.. and now he's in The Brontosaur. Based on a review I've read, their self-titled release is a concept album about saving a race of alien dinosaurs from extinction. I recommend streaming "Two Aeronauts Explode," "This Is Not A Paradise" and "One" from their myspace. I was impressed enough that this ended up being the first mp3 album I've ever bought.. for a cool $9.99. I'd say it was worth it.

She can read, she can read, she can read

Today's video is Interpol "Obstacle 1," where this weird girl falls down and dies at the end and I don't really get why. I enjoy conclusions with unexplained death. But what pisses me off about this video is they cut out about a minute of the song and left out my favorite line which is "Her stories are boring and stuff," which is the line most people like the least, but whatever.. those people are assholes.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

BEATLES REISSUES LOL

The White Album reissue better be fucking amazing because I'm sure I will be paying at least $30.. The copy I have now is too scratched to play which is pretty much my main reasoning.

Also I wanna own the artwork for it.. that huge poster thing. I think it looked like this....

Thursday, August 20, 2009

A Blanket Acne'd With Cigarette Burns

I think I'm happier with the way this disaster of a blog looks now than I was a few hours ago.. It's now a lot closer to copying the way it looked before. Celebrate good times...

Top 50 Of 2007

I took a look at the original 2007 list and threw up in my mouth because it was so boring.. But I fixed it so everything is okay now.

50 Dizzee Rascal “Pussy’Ole”
49 M.I.A. “XR2”
48 Radiohead “All I Need”
47 Grinderman “Electric Alice”
46 Queens Of The Stone Age “Make It Wit Chu”
45 Pinback “Barnes”
44 Deerhoof “Matchbook Seeks Maniac”
43 Queens Of The Stone Age “I’m Designer”
42 UGK feat Outkast “International Player’s Anthem”
41 Minus The Bear “Knights”

40 Rhianna feat Ne-Yo “Hate That I Love You”
39 The National “Mistaken For Strangers”
38 Rob Crow “I Hate You Rob Crow”
37 Kanye West “Flashing Lights”
36 Snoop Dogg “Sensual Seduction”
35 Mystery Jets “Diamonds In The Dark”
34 Rob Crow “Taste”
33 Spoon “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb”
32 M.I.A. “Jimmy”
31 Radiohead “Reckoner”

30 Kings Of Leon “Charmer”
29 The Go! Team “Titanic Vandalism”
28 Yo Majesty “Kryptonite Pussy”
27 Modest Mouse “Dashboard”
26 Justin Timberlake “Until The End Of Time”
25 CRS “Us Placers” (Pharrell, Lupe, Kanye & Thom Yorke)
24 Queens Of The Stone Age “3’s & 7’s”
23 Mystery Jets “Scarecrows In The Rain”
22 Beirut “Nantes”
21 Silversun Pickups “Well Thought Out Twinkles”

20 Radiohead “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”
19 Cut Copy “Hearts On Fire”
18 Minus The Bear “When We Escape”
17 Simian Mobile Disco “I Believe”
16 Justice Vs. Simian “We Are Your Friends”
15 Pinback “Good To Sea”
14 Studio “Origin (Down By The River)”
13 Yo Majesty “Monkey”
12 T-Pain “Buy U A Drank”
11 Silversun Pickups “Lazy Eye”

10 Of Montreal “Voltaic Crusher/Undrum To Muted Da”
09 Caribou “Melody Day”
08 DJ Unk feat Andre 3000 “Walk It Out (Remix)”
07 Radiohead “Bodysnatchers”
06 Silversun Pickups “Checkered Floor”
05 Radiohead “15 Step”
04 Ne-Yo “Because Of You”
03 M.I.A. “Paper Planes”
02 Yo Majesty “Club Action”
01 Pinback “From Nothing To Nowhere”

How's the new blog comin'?

This is the ugliest dumbest thing ever.. Taste My Kids: The Blog is destined for failure. Every one of blogspots templates is not something that fits for what I'm trying to do, and I have no idea how to edit them. Whatever. I'm changing it again now because I don't care.

Edit (1:05AM): This works a little better I guess.. It's not perfect but whatever.. it was free and I don't feel like learning code right now.

Monday, August 17, 2009

no jive

so far this sucks

Yup.. so far the new Taste My Kids is a disaster.

it's so dark inside

Mondays have generally been the nicest days this summer. They are consistently my least frustrating day of the week, since I have no obligations to work.. I work Saturdays instead, which actually isn't so bad either because less people are at my job on Saturdays and so I get unlimited access to VOD (that's "video on demand" for you europeans).

So here's a new feature: "Saturday Movie Reviews"
.. keeping in mind that they're watched with no sound, closed-captioned on, and only paying half attention.

-- FREDDIE GOT FINGERED (2001) --
Found on Cinemax On Demand.. I own this DVD and this was probably my 5th or 6th viewing. It's probably one of the 5 funniest movies ever made. As of right now, there is an entire paragraph on this movie listed in the wikipedia entry for the worst movies of all time. I'm giving this movie a 10 out of 10. I'm also giving the same rating to Ebert & Roeper's review which made me laugh just as hard as the movie itself, simply due to how mindblowingly serious they are taking the subject matter.

-- PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008) --
Possibly on Starz On Demand.. My second viewing.. There's some confusing character development, specifically for the two main characters. I don't really like them enough to care what happens to them throughout the rest of the movie, so that by the time they're getting into fights or getting arrested, it's just plain slapstick with no one to root for. One common premise in this movie, which is probably supposed to be a joke, is the use of household appliances as weapons, such as in one scene where someone gets knocked in the head with a Dust Buster. And hey, spoiler alert: I was surprised by how many characters ended up dying at the end.. kinda bizarre for a stoner-comedy. I'm also confused by the random indie-rock namedropping halfway through the movie, in the scene where Seth Rogan's on the payphone with his beautiful teen girlfriend and Rogan predicts that her college experience will include her getting into The Shins and Godspeed You Black Emperor.. almost as if this movie is asking for permission to be accepted by Juno/Garden State fans. I know it's supposed to be a joke, but much like most of this movies' jokes, it was without lolz. 6.3 out of 10.

-- PREDATOR (1987) --
I didn't get to see all of it, but from what I can tell, it picks up momentum significantly in its second half, and especially once it's Predator and Arnold one-on-one. Also this is amazing. What I saw suggests a solid 9 out of 10.

-- PREDATOR 2 (1990) --
Wasn't paying close enough attention for an accurate review, but here's my best shot.. Danny Glover works in Los Angeles as a cop in the year 1997, which is seven years in the future from when this movie was released. They show future-computers using DOS instead of Windows. Gary Busey plays the same amazing character he plays in every movie but I'm not really sure who he's supposed to be. Bill Paxton is a cop who tells jokes and hits on girl cops.. He's the type of character who only exists to die at some point, which I was very quickly able to accurately predict. There's a part where a man is standing on the ledge of a building and Danny Glover shoots him, and then we get to watch a stunt-double falling off the ledge of a building in slow motion with his arms and legs flailing around. 8 out of 10.

- BAD BOYS (1995) --
I only saw the first half. Martin is a married cop, and Will Smith is a swingin' bachelor cop. Joe Pantoliano is their boss or something. None of them dress with cop uniforms, but instead they wear what rich drug dealers would have worn in 1989. They're trying to find whoever stole the cops' heroin. There's these 2 girls who are dressed the way En Vogue used to dress walking around minding their own business, and one of them is left alone for a minute, and she gets killed by the dudes who stole the heroin. She also happens to be the woman Will Smith loves, which is very sad. And then Martin drives around with the other girl who witnessed the whole thing but I couldn't really tell what was happening. I had to leave after that. 7.5 out of 10.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

the internet

I don't have as much time for writing as I used to, so the free "blog" version of taste my kids will be including lots of lists and youtube postings..

i wanted "radio free europe" to be the first youtube post.. and this version specifically..

Saturday, August 15, 2009

wtf

not sure how this happened, but I just did a google search for "taste my kids" and turns out that someone, possibly a friend who forgot to tell me, was taking various content from the geocities version and copying it into a blog..

http://tastemykids.blogspot.com

wtf this is so fucked. No explanation.. Where did this come from? How did it happen? im so confused. who even reads crap that i write anyway?

10 minutes later I set up a blogspot account. i've had no luck with trying to figure out wordpress for the past 7 months.. i probably have a learning disability. for now, taste my kids will forward here.