#lolgore

[jeffreybeaumont]

I smoked my first cigarette 20 years ago this past month. 

I was 13 years old and in Germany on a school trip--I’m not 100% sure, but I believe I was in Bremen, near Hamburg. I can’t say exactly what the forces were that led me to decide to trying smoking then and there, but it was likely a combination of curiosity, rebellion, boredom and the opportunity freedom that comes with being a more or less unchaperoned young American teen in Europe for the first time (this was also the first time I tried wheat beer, which more or less didn’t exist in America at that point). 

I was surprised to learn that in Germany cigarettes were sold in vending machines--and not only in bars or shops but on city streets, solitarily providing a fix in the most go-to of fashions. I remember eyeing a lonely unattended kiosk, gingerly glancing sideways to ensure there were no adults around to reproach me--though I was pretty sure it was legal for teens to smoke, my Americanness lead to me to an inherent distrust of the theoretically disapproving faces of adults either way. I approached the machine and tried to make out how it worked, some combination of coin-entry and lever pulling. And the decision-making! There were Marlboros, which I knew, and a lot of brands which I didn’t know. What was the best? What was the best for me? After futzing around for a few minutes, I couldn’t seem to figure out its operation, but suddenly a very old man appeared in my periphery, smiling and nodding his head. He said something to me in German which I did not understand, and then gestured with his hands. When I still didn’t move, or perhaps because I just looked confused, he took the Deutschmarks from my hand and put them into the machine and selected the Marlboro Reds near where my nervous hand was hovering. A clink and clack later, his hand reached into an open slot and came out with a pack in his hand. Handing them over to me, he smiled, nodded and walked off.

Over the following 20 years, my relationship with cigarettes waxed and waned, from peaks of packs a day to yearlong periods of no smoking at all, to a final comfortable resting point over the past 6 years of “occasional nips on vacations, sunny day drives and the occasional moments of stress”. But I’ll always remember that first time.

[jeffreybeaumont]

Domo Arrigato Mr Synthboto

Stumbled across this hilarious and charming video of what I guess are long-haired northern European teens jamming away in their mom’s kitchen across a medley of synth-driven 80s songs. Even if you don’t want to appreciate it, it’s pretty easy to do so anyway.

[jeffreybeaumont]

Modern Versions Of My Favorite Songs Are Often Rubbish

Despite the fact that two of my favorite artists are involved, somehow I have only today discovered the existence of this Blur cover of possibly my favorite song of all-time, Rod Stewart’s classic “Maggie May”. I have lived and loved the shit out of this song, and it also holds the rare distinction of also being one of my parents’ favorite songs (their record of Every Picture Tells A Story which I inherited is so worn out as to be almost unlistenable). 

Unfortunately, Blur’s version--recorded for an NME comp in ‘92--is more of less what I imagine what it would sound like if I recorded myself performing at a karaoke club--stilted, vacant vocals, too bright instrumentation and chintzy sounding drum programming. I do sorta give them points for trying though.

[jeffreybeaumont]

[Shannyn] Sossamon, then ... unknowingly became pregnant with her first son, Audio Science Clayton.

Nylon magazine feature

OK.

[pop-punk-tual]

Dodgy Film Club: Birdemic - Shock and Terror

Blondie is actually laughing. There's nothing funny about your acting career going down the tubes, love.

Once you experience* the rollercoaster* journey* of human emotion that is The Room it’s very hard to find a film that is not only as dodgy and lolworthy but also takes itself seriously. After much searching and several slightly dodgy films, Bridemic: Shock and Terror was chosen. I'm still recovering.  (*I’m thinking of becoming a scriptwriter for ‘reality tv talent shows, just getting the lingo down.)

This is a masterpiece in bad cinema. It seems the brains behind it (James Nguyen) is super concerned about global warming and decided the medium of film was the best way to get the message across. The, eh, plot is that after what feels like a lifetime of awkward converstaion between the characters, they are attacked by some eagles who are pissed off about oil prices. Or something. There are literally too many mistakes and terrible things to mention but they include:

Awful acting without any emotion/dialogue read in monotone

Terrible cuts that have clearly been recorded at different times, resulting in changes in sound quality/background noise 

A news report that resembles a school project.

Actually, all the ‘science’ and explanations are lol

Shakey camera-work that ruins any small chance of getting ‘lost’ in the ‘story’ 

Filer! Filler! Filler! WE GET IT, THEY’RE IN A RESTARAUNT.

‘A date without sex is a date wated’ *thrusting motion*

Awkward gaps and pauses during the ‘phone calls’ that don’t sync up properly

REALLY awkward pauses at the end of scenes that haven’t been edited out

Extennnnded clapping. Srsly, go make a sandwich once they start clapping, it goes on for ages

An Irish bar with that Irish form of Irish musical entertainment: a black soul singer, performing (miming) to a full band track by himself

This, can I just add, is all before the atrocity that are the birds appear in the film, looking like something out of DuckHunt and sounding like a mouse orgy as interpreted by angry dolphins. An as for the ‘attacks’, they really have to be seen to be believed. The characters flail at random (using their motel hangars at weapons...) and the digitally added 2D birds flap ineffectually somewhere around the general vicinity. And all of this because the birds are angry at global warming (or something). The smell of hippy/film student off the film can be whiffed a mile away, from the clunky suggestions that hybrid cars are great dropped into the script with as much subtley as a petrol bomb, to the embarassing background soundtrack that is clearly a reworking of Imagine by John Lennon ‘written’ by some stoner who had his mind blown when he picked up his shitty acoustic and the ‘music, like, just came to him’ one evening. There’s also a treehugger who looooves trees and eventually leaves the scene when he hears a mountain lion. LOLWAT. Oh yeah, then there’s a forest fire for some reason.

Oh, and the guns do this.

After the birds arrive there are plenty of moments to make you ask HOW DID THIS GET MADE???? including:

CGI fireballs that look like the ones from South Park

The kamikaze fighter pilot sound some of the birds make

The same footage of one bird being shot being used over and over and over again 

Unlimited bullets!

Where were they even driving to?

A doctor scientist ornithologist giving a lecture

The two kids pretty much being adopted, no questions asked

I guess James Nguyen has succeeded in creating awareness, through a massive lolfail. The film is meant to be a stark warning and the catlyst to the viewer asking themselves some stern questions about their carbon footprint. The only questions I was left with was how this got made and how did he manage to get so many hotties involved!? Srsly, there's so much lolgore and so bad it's funny stuff going on I can't even cover it. Watch it!

[pop-punk-tual]

Dodgy Film Club: Slashers

Srsly, what's this guy going to do, poke me to death? It could leave a splinter I guess. Still though, that's a minor inconvenience at worst..

This film has an amazing setup but while it’s worth a watch for the funny elements, unfortunately didn’t quite bring the lolgore it could have. A Japanese gameshow pits contestants against 3 ‘slashers’ on  a set that looks like a badly run lasertag course, and whoever is left alive at the end of an hour wins the cash! It includes a studio audience, smiley host, cheerleaders and some lad providing LIVE creepy music.

The contestants are pretty much the usual Racially Inclusive Survival Team(tm), in this case we have:

Well built, angry african american man

Political fembitch

‘foreign’ muscle man (read: fat mexican looking dude with canadian/russian/mexican accent depending on the scene)

Dimwited aspiring actress slash model

The athletic all action girl (who is actually the fattest out of the 3 wimmin)

The calculating ‘college/business guy’

 The weirdest thing about this is the camera work, or maybe the quality of the camera. It has a really strange videogame look as if the people are too close to the screen and the sets look like they were made by schoolkids. There are times when characters bang against ‘stone walls’ that sound alarmingly like cardboard. Other things to look out for include:

Completely unnatural dialogue

Characters saying the situation is ‘crazy’

Interchangable accents

The bluntest stabbing weapons of all time and a WOODEN sword

‘windows’ that clearly have no glass in them

A chainsaw that is never actually running

Lots of partial nudity (“TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF SO I CAN BANDAGE HER FACE!”)

Blood squirting from somewhere other than the stab wound

Awkward pauses while the show goes on an ad break that are actually pretty well done

Convenient powercuts/camera panning when the special effects obviously weren’t available to show stabbing etc

All in all I could talk about how it provides an interesting social commentary yada yada but idk how srs it's meant to be.. I would say not to watch it in a house where you don't know your housemates that well as my friend did.. something about the japanese girls, the bad acting and one slasher being a pervert mean you might have to give explanations like 'not a porno' and 'still not a porno' everytime someone comes into the room.

[pop-punk-tual]

Dodgy Film Club: Bitch Slap

Despite the amazing title, this unfortunately falls very much into the dodgy category.. There's a plot in there somewhere (sort of) but if it wasn't for the occasional vague satire on the exploitation genre there isn't much to separate this from a fantasy of a 14 year old with an xbox online gold membership.

There's two busty bitches (no, no, it's cool to call them that, it's empowering, they're taking it back) and one slightly less busty bitch and they basically are looking for, eh, some diamonds or something. And beat the merry bejaysus out of each other at different points. At times the action scenes and backgrounds seem like they've been done for srs and others it looks like an 80s action tv show/90s heavy metal video. Really it's pretty bad and not funny bad, so here's an impromptu drinking game I've just made up. Drink when:

There's an innuendo. Not limited to dialogue, placenames count. Also they drop in 'insulting' put down names that make little sense, the best of which being 'Blow White' so you can drink at those too.

They do the horrifyingly overplayed flashback scenes. That go in reverse chronological order. Go figure.

Every death. Good luck with that in the 'nameless policeman' slaughter towards the end btw.

There are some terrible lines that are good for a lol, 'Never change who you are' or something like that..and a full body tourettes dude like in Crank 2 who makes some otherwise tiring scenes bearable..

[pop-punk-tual]

Dodgy Film Club: House of the Dead

Ok to start with, this was the first film we watched after the lolfactory that was The Room, nothing was going to stack up against that. Even so, this falls on the side of bad, instead of so bad it's funny, though there were a few bits that made it fit into the amazing/dodgy category. The film is based on a computer game and to prove to the nerds who liked the game (I'm presuming) the film makers decided to splice game footage in at different points. Cool idea but the graphics are laughable and this happens way too much. The plot is simple enough, there's an island, there's a group of teenagers/twenty somethings played by twenty and thirty somethings, who are ethnically diverse, and there's a bananas amount of zombies who can run, use weapons and swim..purists should probably stay away from these all action zombies who are one script rewrite from getting a dance number. There's not a huge amount of lolgore, we didn't care if the characters lived or not and the obvious fact that the 'matrix' effect was something the makers thought was super necessary for every character during the big fight scene, or simply that it was used as filler is only funny for so long. It does pick up some bonus points for the unexplained parts and the bloopers such as the crazy guy on the boat briefly having a hook for a hand at the start and continuity errors like a semi-clad girl running up the beach who has more clothes on a second later as she goes into the forest. This was released in 2003 and the ending set it up for a sequel and good goth there was one released in 2009. On the list..