Category: Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Dancing Monkey One: Watch The Middleman, you bastards.

A steady trickle of blog topics rolling in response to my offer to be a Dancing Monkey this week (though most come, as most of my comments do, through the livejournal feed). Pushes my thoughts in interesting directions, it does, with enough random writerly nonsense included to keep me going for a while. Logically they should happen in order, but I’m going to start with something relatively easy (because it’ll feed into a couple of other topics folks have suggested). To whit, Adam demanded “a public rave about the awesomeness of The Middleman.” This I can do, with bells on and a cherry on top. I can’t, apparently, do it without swearing and unleashing hate upon the world. Consider yourselves warned. My rave starts thusly: Go and watch The Middleman in whatever form that’s available, you fuckers, because the fact that they’ve only made one season of this show makes me cry. You should know before I go any further that I’m not a fan

PeterMBall 24/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

One of those days where I changed my mind at the last minute, and thus shot myself in the foot when it came to actually having something to say about it. What needs to be said about the Sisters of Mercy apart from “sometimes you just need go get your goth on”?

PeterMBall 24/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

This is why I’m not a reviewer

I have two moderately hard-and-fast rules when it comes picking movies: no musicals, and no spoofs. I’ve developed these rules after years of being a miserable git who complains about things, and they’re usually followed for the safety of everyone involved. I’m just not geared to enjoy either of those genres, so it’s safer to avoid them. Last Friday, while visiting the local video store, I broke said rules three times. The first to pick up Cabaret and The Producers, the second to pick up Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. To their credit, none of those films was the worst thing I watched this week (that was a film called Blue State, which made me profoundly irritated and left me wondering if a film that was theoretically about being part of the American left was perhaps funded by conservatives gleefully trying to make lefties look idiotic and redundant); yet all three reminded me that I really shouldn’t watch musicals

PeterMBall 17/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I’d kinda made a promise to myself that I’d stop posting Amanda Palmer/Dresden Dolls clips on Fridays, since I’m aware that I do it quite a bit. It isn’t really intentional so much as a reflection of my tendency to be very focused on one band for a few years – there’s a period in my late teens where I had the same kind of thing going with REM and the Cure, a time in my early twenties where there was ungodly amounts of Primus and Korn*, and now I seem to have caught the Dresden Doll’s bug (although it may yet turn into a long-term obsession, in much the same way that I never quite lost my obsessive fanboyishness of Nick Cave). Anyway, yes, I keep telling myself to hold back on the Amanda Palmer clips. I think, by now, you’ve all more-or-less caught onto the fact that I regard the band as awesome wrapped in greatness and delivered

PeterMBall 17/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Red Planet Squee

Given my weebling joy of the Flash Gordon marathon I posted about a week or two ago, you may be inclined to speculate that I’m something of a fan of these planetary romance/sword-and-ray-gun genres wherein heroes from earth are plucked up and cast across the universe by various means. You would, of course, be correct – and thus be able to predict the gibbering joy that filled my office this morning when I discovered that there is a John Carter of Mars film in the works, with Michael Chabon working on the script. It’s still a long way off, to be sure, but I shall remain quietly excited about the possibility that it may manifest and be good viewing. I’m now going to head off to the computer without the internet to get some work done, in the hopes that yesterday’s burst of productivity can be maintained.

PeterMBall 16/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Because it’s been a Flash Gordon kind of week, this week. Rewatched the movie, watched the Sci-Fi channel series from last year (so by-the-numbers it hurts, but watchable regardless), and re-read some comic collections I had around the house. Also because Autumn is coming, and Queen’s bass player reminds us all of the horrible crimes committed when one picks the wrong sweater in the morning.

PeterMBall 10/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I was seventeen or eighteen when this came out, and sufficiently into the works of William Burroughs to be overly affectionate towards any song that made use of the Wild Boys and mugwump jism in their lyrics. If I remember correctly, this came out the same year I traumatized my mother by asking for copies of Junky and Queer for Christmas, forcing her to go from bookshop to bookshop asking for them without context. To her credit, she found them – this wasn’t an easy feat on the Gold Coast at the time, and probably still isn’t today (though I hear they’ve put in a borders now, which may make things easier).

PeterMBall 03/04/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I found myself oddly obsessed with this clip this week. The naughties, they are time for clips where singers dance on travellators and treadmills.

PeterMBall 27/03/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Still one of my favourite video clips, some ten years after I first saw it in the wee hours of the morning while watching Rage on the ABC. There are many things I don’t miss about my twenties, but I have to admit that I wish that staying up late to watch Rage still had the same thrill it once did.

PeterMBall 13/03/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

The Herd, 2020. Just cause I like the clip.

PeterMBall 06/03/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I went looking for a decent live version of the Mountain Goat’s Lovecraft in Brooklyn, which is easily the song I love with a deep and fierce devotion off Heretic Pride. Unfortunately most of the live videos posted on youtube tend to drown out the vocals, so I’m kind of limited in options. Fortunately there is no real shortage of good Mountain Goats songs : Updated June, 2013: Seems the original song I’d linked to is no longer accessible,  so I’ve added a link to an interesting photo-montage video of Lovecraft in Brooklyn instead.

PeterMBall 20/02/2009
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Because I can’t help myself, and wish to share the awesome – The Dresden Doll’s Amanda Palmer doing a cover of the Sesame Street version of Feist’s 1-2-3-4: -sigh- Apparently Palmer hits Brisbane on the first of March. I can afford neither ticket nor the time to head along, but I’m tempted to go anyway. Anyone interested in coming along?

PeterMBall 13/02/2009

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