#tmsblog

[ljcarmona]

Shots from my blog shoot!

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: There's a baby in the trash...I'd like some beans on that...

Stolen from: http://vanyaland.blogspot.com/2008/05/burittos-only-show-up-when-you-want-one.html who stole it from http://www.sledgehammertotheface.com/2008/04/04/wal-mart-mistakes-buritto-in-trash-for-baby/

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: Select Accolades

Just a summarized update on what we've been up to for the last bit of time...

-"30 Lives (Up-Up-Down-Dance Mix)" included in 2008 Dance Dance Revolution Video Game -"30 Lives" video on "120 Minutes" - MTV Latin Amer., MuchMusic, Fuse On Demand, and many other regional, national, and international stations - 2008 -CMJ Spotlight Artist - 3/14 - 3/21 2008 -CMJ Independent Select Tracks Chart #67 - "30 Lives" - Feb. 2008 -CMJ Top 200 #71 - The truth will catch you, just wait... - Feb. 2008 -CMJ Top 20 Most Added #13 - The truth will catch you, just wait... - Jan. 2008 -Blender feature "30 Lives" Breakout Video - Feb. 6, 2008 -SPIN.com Band of the Year - one of 8 finalists in the Underground Category  -Best Boston albums of 2006 - Boston Metro - Jan. 4, 2007 -"Satellite" Music Video screened at the 2007 BIMINI Intl. Fest. of Animation Films -2006 Grammy Entry #60 in Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal -2006 Grammy Entry #127 in Best Pop Vocal Album  -2006 Last Band Standing, WFNX and AI New England Competition -2006 Fuse TV Bodog Battle of the Bands City Finalists -SPIN.com Band of the Month - Feature in SPIN Magazine, Apr. 2006 -SPIN Essential - Music You Need to Download! SPIN Magazine, Mar. 2006 -Microsoft - New Music Feature - SPIN Magazine, Mar. 2006 -SPIN.com Band of the Month, Jan. 2006 -SPIN.com Band of the Day, Jan. 13, 2006

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: Will you teach me how to be polite so giant people will like me?

I just found my favorite video lesson on manners starring everyone's favorite alien, Beezbo!

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: The Motion Sick Interview on Strange Glue

When we were down in Austin for SXSW, we met up with awesome fellow Aidan Williamson, who interviewed us for Strange Glue.  He was a swell guy and asked us a bunch of interesting things and did a great job writing it all up for your amusement, enjoyment, and education...

"This interview is over!" exclaims The Motion Sick's guitarist Patrick Mussari as he slams his hands down on the table in front of him, and all it took was a small mention of two words, Joy Division...

http://www.strangeglue.com/news/strange-glue-showcase-the-motion-sick-interview-and-music-/1761

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: Self Checkout Crash!

Today, while buying sundries at my local Shaw's supermarket using the self-checkout machine, I learned that the system is based on Windows XP Embedded when the machine crashed and rebooted mid-transaction. I wasn't fast enough to get the initial computer boot screen, but got a few shots before the application reloaded itself. We had a hard time figuring out if our payment went through or not. It crashed as we finalized the credit card transaction. After consulting the staff, who asked how we managed to crash it, we all decided that we'd best assume it charged us and be on our way. It's not as exciting as the picture I saw once of a laser-surgery machine controlled by Windows software that had brought up a general protection fault, but it's all I've got...

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: Dewey Beach Popfest in Pictures

Okay, the title is a lie. The pictures you are about to see chronicle the journey to and from Dewey Beach, DE for the Dewey Beach Popfest. If you'd like to see photos and video of us performing, head over here. I wasn't thrilled about my performance, but after being stuck in the car for about 10 hours thanks to NJ and DE traffic, I wasn't much ready to make the rock and roll music. Luckily, the event was well organized, the sound was good, and everyone was friendly, so that helped some. Much of the time, people sat in the back attentively, but we were able to get some people up and dancing in the front area with some minor coercion.

Our setlist:

Here were our lovely female travel companions ("unintentionally" dressed identically during the entire trip, down to the large, white sunglasses):

As for our journey, here are a few things we observed... Dewey Beach, like the rest of the world loves a really stupid pun.  Nothing bugs me more than business names riddled with puns.  Most often, it's coffee shops, but the lodging facilities are getting in on it now.  We didn't stay here, but I hate the name:

The Rusty Rudder, where we played outside (in the back):

We did not, however, make it to the venue that is allegedly, "the greatest rock n roll bar in the world."  It appeared to be closed at the time.

Dewey Beach was also filled with other gaudy, but hilarious nonsense.  Lisa demanded a lounging visit to "Crabby Dicks."  No food I could eat there, but they did have a nice copy of an ad placed in a local paper essentially proclaiming the silly innuendo-themed restaurant as a danger to children and all decent persons with modest tastes.  

Make note also of my allergic reaction to sunlight.

This reaction was alleviated somewhat by the realization that Travis and I both were wearing the same socks, both obtained on separate earlier bowling excursions to Dorchester's magical 24-hour pin party, Boston Bowl.

A popular fast-food chain at a rest stop on the way there had a planted edging around the entrance dotted with some lovely flowers and bushes...but wait!  The keen Lisa noticed that there was more there than meets the eye as all of the flowers in this decorative area were plastic...pretty tacky, but I would never have noticed. Some cars in the parking lot also made me feel uncomfortable with flourescent proclamations of capturing incendiary spirit.

Lisa and her keen eyes, however, set their sites on everyone else's pretzels.  She claims that she was possessed by "the devil's pitchfork" (shown here - Lisa on the right, pitchfork on the left).

Alas, we left Dewey Beach and made a stopover in New York City to have a night of good times.  Sophia and I met up with David T. Little, master of many musical endeavors including musical performances on The Motion Sick's first album.  We decided to go on over to Red Bamboo for some vegan soul food.   While we waited, a car pulled up on the street in front of us.  Sophia exclaimed, "Isn't that Little Steven!"  Indeed it was.  He heard her say it and looked at her for a moment before pulling out a large, polka-dotted suitcase and leaving the scene.  His parking spot, however, was not as fortuitous as he may have believed.  The proximal fire hydrant was unquestionably closer than standard fire-hydrant safe-distance regulations.  We thought, hey, it's Little Steven, he has an awesome radio show and played with the boss, so maybe he can park wherever he wants.  We went inside to eat and came out to find that Little Steven was about to become $100 poorer (assuming he doesn't just call the city and remind them how cool he is) as one of NY's finest was writing him a parking ticket.  I took a bunch of pictures, but provided the ones below that are the least revealing.  However, I will let you enjoy the copper placing the ticket on Stevie's windshield and then a blurry closeup of the ticket.

After this encounter, we headed on over to a party in Brooklyn, which was a good-time gathering of musical friends of David's, some of whom had stepped out of music into legal affairs.  Not only were they interesting folk, but they also had a bottle of the yellow-capped Kosher-for-Passover Coke that I've been hearing about for many years.   The story, as I understand it, roughly goes:

Coke had actual sugar in it.  People enjoyed it.  Coke made an intentionally crappy product "New Coke" and discontinued "delicious," sugary Coke.  No one liked New Coke, as it was made intentionally to be bad.  Coke met the will of the people by bringing back old Coke and calling it "Coke Classic."  However, this time, they replaced the sugar with high-fructose corn syrup, which tastes significantly crappier.  The thing was, New Coke was so bad that no one noticed.  Now, you can't get Coke without HFCS.  When Passover rolls around, there are apparently enough Coke-craving Jews who are prohibited from eating corn products that it makes sense for Coke to release a limited supply of non-HFCS Coke.  This batch had sucrose in it.  

I don't really enjoy Coke, but I tried a few sips and it did have less of a harsh aftertaste.  We did also subsequently see a Kosher-for-Passover can of Coke at a bagel place in Queens.  I can't remember the name, but it was something like "Must Eat Bagels...Must!"

We also enjoyed a visit to the rooftop of this swanky building with a great view of the Brooklyn Bridge.  It made me realize that "The Brooklyn Rooftops" is a band name that would immediately result in indie success, particularly if the band were Canadian.  I get a 10% cut!

My sister Rachel and her fiancé John were kind enough to let us stay at their apartment while they were away visiting my parents.  We spent approximately a total of 3 hours there.  I guess they actually spent more time cleaning the place for us than we spent inside of it.  Sometimes that happens.

Unrelated to any of this, whenever I speak of engaged people, I am reminded of a tid-bit that I only learned about 2 years ago.

fiancé  = a man engaged to be married; a man to whom a woman is engaged. fiancée = a woman engaged to be married; a woman to whom a man is engaged. It's too bad we don't follow that pattern.  We'd be men and mene.

Until next time...

[michaeljepstein]

The Motion Sick: Scarlett Johansson and her singerizing

Update: This stuff is getting yanked left and right...some of the links might work, some might not... I've now heard three songs from the forthcoming album of Tom Waits covers (and I think maybe 1 original) performed by Scarlett Johansson (with a quite impressive cast of backers) - album title: Anywhere I Lay My Head Scarlett Johansson - vocals Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio) - production David Bowie - vocals on "Falling Down" and "Fannin Street" Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) - guitars The first song, "I Don't Want to Grow Up" sounds like an early Magnetic Fields song arrangement. Her voice is pretty weak, but the whole thing is so far off from what I would have expected that I'll need to hear it a bunch before I can decide what I think of it. I really like the original and I really like the version done by The Ramones, so I may not really have the space in my brain for an additional version of the song...still, it's the best of the three that I've heard. Listen to:I Don't Want to Grow Up "Anywhere I Lay My Head" is also a little bit like The Magnetic Fields, but less so... and "I Wish I Was in New Orleans" reminds me of Margaret Leng Tan with its klinky toy instrument sounds. Listen to: Anywhere I Lay My Head Listen to: I Wish I Was in New Orleans Clip of "Falling Down" Full tracklisting: Tracklisting 1. "Fawn" (originally on Tom Waits' album Alice) – 2:32 2. "Town with No Cheer" (originally on Tom Waits' album Swordfishtrombones) – 5:03 3. "Falling Down" (originally on Tom Waits' album Big Time) – 4:55 4. "Anywhere I Lay My Head" (originally on Tom Waits' album Rain Dogs) – 3:38 5. "Fannin Street" (originally on Tom Waits' album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards) – 5:06 6. "Song for Jo" – 4:09 7. "Green Grass" (originally on Tom Waits' album Real Gone) – 3:33 8. "I Wish I Was in New Orleans" (originally on Tom Waits' album Small Change) – 3:59 9. "I Don't Want to Grow Up" (originally on Tom Waits' album Bone Machine) – 4:11 10. "No One Knows I'm Gone" (originally on Tom Waits' album Alice) – 2:57 11. "Who Are You?" (originally on Tom Waits' album Bone Machine) – 4:49