Lonely Island - Turtleneck and Chain

Andy Samberg and crew return with another batch of white boy prank rap.  I love it, but the crude and offensive lyrics may throw some people off.  With guests from Akon to Justin Timberlake to MICHAEL BOLTON(!?!?) there's a whole lot of greatness going on.  If you just want something fun that will make you laugh all summer, definitely pick this one up.  Highlights are I Just Had Sex, Jack Sparrow and Motherlover.

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

Now this is what a Foo Fighters album should sound like.  I think the time away from the Foo's was good for Dave Grohl.  This is the most rocking album since The Colour and The Shape.  Maybe it was hanging out with his Crooked Vultures crew or being produced by Butch Vig, but this album is a real return to the rock.  Very stripped down, focused, bare bones rock.  A really solid effort from beginning to end.  I was about done with the Foos, having not been too happy with their last couple of albums, but this has returned my love of Dave.  Look out for some good guest appearances too.

Weekend Cover: Weezer - Paranoid Andrioid

Yes. Yes that's good. Radiohead is always good.

The Horrors: Still LIfe

I never thought I'd associate The Horrors with bands like Simple Minds or The Psychedelic Furs but that's kinda what's going on with Still Life, from their upcoming album Skying. A big shift, but I do find myself digging the old-school synth sounds as opposed to the Hammond organ stuff on the last few albums. Also, it's nice to see somebody still using a Windows 95 screensaver for something useful. Good for you, sir or madam.

Goodbye Bonesaw

I saw the first of Sam Raimi's Spider Man movies with a handful of good friends who, like me, were hopeless comic book nerds. Normally the post-credits discussion after a movie like this would be filled with comparisons to the comic, spotting Easter eggs, and bitching about plot holes. Not here. We didn't say much about the cameos by Stan Lee and Bruce Campbell either. We all left with smiles on our faces repeating one line from a character who had less than 30 seconds of screen time, and we still quote him to this day.

The world might remember him as Randy "Macho Man" Savage but to me & my friends.... he was Bone Saw and that motherfucker was ready.

Black Swanson

"I just want to be perfect."

Vegan Black Metal Chef

I think I'm falling in love with the internet all over again. Thanks VBMC, you made my Monday worthwhile.Now let's cut some tofu and crush some peanuts, the hardcore black metal way!

Weekend Cover: Dave Grohl - Tiny Dancer

It was either this or Tiny Danzig. Dave's banter is funnier, trust me. Have a wonderful weekend internets!

"You know let's skip all that other crap and get to the chorus, like on that bus scene."

Thor Was Pretty Good

Pretty good. Not great but good. Don’t go into it expecting a Christopher Nolan movie, or even a Jon Favreau movie. Branagh does a great job with the characters; you definitely buy Chris Helmsworth as Thor.  Loki has to be my favorite though. It would have been easy to play him over-the top 100% of the time, subtle worked much better. The visuals are really well done. I didn’t catch it in 3D but I may actually go back to check it out again. I was kinda worried about how they would handle the rainbow bridge, because you know that could have turned out all sorts of wrong, but they pull it off nicely. There are some truly epic shots and the costumes come off way better than I expected based on the early stills we saw last year. 

It would have been interesting to see a film that was a 100% Kenneth Branagh production, which I’m guessing we didn’t get here. Too bad. It’s probably not Branagh’s fault though. You can tell he was given a laundry list of shit from Marvel that he had to include: Frost Giants, the exile/redemption plotline, Jane Foster, and oh yeah tie it in pretty heavily with the Avengers movie ‘cause that’s coming up next.  There are a million “bridge” references in this movie and that’s exactly what it feels like. Introduce Thor & his supporting cast, speed through the origin story, and give him a reason to come back next summer for the Avengers™, a Marvel Studios production. 

I’m not going to bitch about the overall racial makeup of the cast, you can read plenty of that elsewhere on the interwebs. Haters gonna hate I guess. Yes, in a movie about Norse gods two of them are played by a black guy and an asian guy. Two guys, that’s it. I understand that the Norse pantheon probably isn't the most racially diverse crowd but just to be clear….this is a movie based on a comic book, which was very loosely based on Norse mythology. It’s not like they threw in a Hispanic guy, somebody with down’s-syndrome, and a kid in a wheelchair like it was a McDonald’s commercial or something. I’m not sure how accurate you expect these things to be but please, let it go. There’s a rainbow bridge in it for fuck’s sake! Plus, Heimdall was kind of a badass in this one. /Rant off.   

All told Thor is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a summer blockbuster , available in multiple dimensions, and also an advertisement for next year’s Avengers movie. It’s probably not going to end up in my movie collection next to my other 10,000 nerdy comic book movies but that’s ok.

PS – [spoilers] WTF what that shit at the end after the credits? Vibranium?