For all of you who have heard rumors, read the headlines, and are distressed at the idea of Punk Rock Bowling 2004 may not happen.... Super Shawn and Super Mark to the Rescue! Or something like that.... The back up plans are being put into action.
I am crossing my fingers that we will go to the Gold Coast...
Email from Shawn Stern this morning:
Farewell my readers! While you're singing along with the boys of Punk Rock Karaoke on Saturday, I'll be pursuing journalistic integrity in the reviewing of movies at the 19th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Writing for free has finally paid off in the form of a media pass (when you don't have much, every little bit counts).
1) Girl With a Pearl Earring (wide release)
2) The Big Bounce
3) I can't decide between an independent gay film, or a French action film. You're on your own.
Shag fans and all retroswankiphiles take note: the cat in pink is back to celebrate his 40th anniversary, more dashing and deliciously debonair than ever.
>Meeeeow!<
I think stupidity is the theme for this week. Stupid teenagers, stupid accents, stupid criminals, stupid mountain climbers, and so on. You get the idea. It's not necessarily a bad thing, its just a commonality.
My Top Three:
1) Mystic River
2) Dirt
3) Touching the Void
"Your necklace may break, the fau tree may burst, but my tattooing is indestructible. It is an everlasting gem that you will take into your grave."
- Verse from a traditional tattoo artist's song
i like tattoos. and, since you're here, chance has it that you probably don't mind them too much either. do you have one? two? are you covered? what are they of? did you ever wonder what it all means, or where it all came from? how it progrssed through the years and is now associated with particular groups of people? well, i like tattoos and have decided to poke my nose in a few books and see what i come up with...
First of, the word tattoo comes from the Tahitian "tatu" which means "to mark something."
Well, if Miss Falling can be artsy fartsy, so can I :-P
Actually, I am not artistic in the least - the last "serious work of art" I did was in 1986 or so - a charcoal portrait of John Taylor of Duran Duran around the "Rio" period, heh heh; today I mostly get my jollies disecting others' works. However.... as I have nothing of note to contribute at this time, here's a recent photo:
Apparently I was a very bad photo girl last year at Punk Rock Bowling, as I did not remember everyone's name.
In the 17 day countdown until Punk Rock Bowling 2004, I shall be posting a few best of shots from years past.
Today, I present to you Cute Boy : Matt - A.K.A. Nekkid Boy from PRB 2003!
The question of today is - are those bandaids or bowties or bowling pins on his boxer shorts?
It's official. It's over. No more good movies. We have used up the resources of the oasis and now must brave the desert. So sad. So very sad.
1) The Cooler
2) Along Came Polly
3) Tokyo Godfathers
Every year, DJ Dan goes to Japan to visit friends and extended family. This year, I asked him to be our Barflies.net correspondent:
"Everybody always asks me what I do every time I visit Japan. This being my 5th visit, I decided to make an effort to write down as much as I could of the things I did when I was there this time.
Here are some of the highlights of this trip:
December 25th - Exchanging Christmas gifts with my Japanese friends. I never thought this would ever happen, completely blew my mind. Who says you canít have Christmas in Japan?
December 26th - Ratholic at Gabi Gabi in Harajuku. Ratholic is an instrumental Surf band from Yokohama featuring all girls except for the guitar player. The girls wore matching dresses and we gave the guitar player a hard time for not having a matching dress. They played a mix of originals and covers. They had a perfect sound with keyboards, and saxophone to round it all out. This was an all night event and they went on at 12:30pm. The place was a small pub owned by the singer on the Japanese Rockabilly band The Rizlas. The Heineken on tap was good, but it cost 900 yen, which is about 9 dollars per glass! We didnít stay for the other bands; we were told that they werenít very good, so we left early. On the way home it snowed!
December 30th - ìGarage Rockin Crazeî, Shinjuku Loft. This was another all night event that started at 12am. We arrived at 12am and the first band Jet Boys started around 12:30. Jet Boys were a punk rock trio with a 40 year old singer/guitar player who gets completely naked when he performs. Thankfully they only played 4 songs. Then there was Taka who used to play keyboards for the surf band Jackie & the Cedrics. I had no idea he was a DJ as well as an excellent keyboard player. He did an amazing DJ set full of scratching his records, doing hand stands on top of his keyboards, and proceeded to light his keyboards on fire at the end of his set! Next were the 5,6,7,8ís, this show was to feature the original line up from the early 80ís. They just came out with a new CD of material from this line up, so they were only going to do a couple of shows to promote the CD. I was quite surprised when they hit the stage wearing 80ís clothing and whipped cream all over their faces. Their set was about 25 minutes long with them doing a very rocking version of the Go Goís ìWe Got The Beatî. I love this band, check out their performance in Quentin Tarantinoís latest movie ìKill Bill Vol. 1. The best band of the evening was the Young Parisians. A Japanese glam band with every member of the band dressed up in glam garb. They looked absolutely fantastic, and they sounded great! I was a bit disappointed that they only played 7 songs, but ended with ìAll The Young Dudesî. After their set, we decided to leave at 4am. We wanted to see our friends Jackie and Enocky play, but they were scheduled to go around 6:30 and there were 3 other bands scheduled before their set. It was a great show even though we left a few hours early.
Happy New Year my readers! Did you all make resolutions? I only made one:
To strive for greater things and to stop settling for less than what I deserve.
Then I saw what was being released this week and realized just how difficult keeping my resolution would be. Bleak. Yes my children "bleak" is the only word I can use to describe our options this week. So here's my top three:
1) 21 Grams
2) Monster
3) Big Fish
If you think they sound familiar, itís because all the new movies suck.
In a gesture of unbridled impartiality (hmmm...we'll see how well that works out), the opening slots of the 2004 Wreckers Ball, scheduled for Halloween weeekend 2004 in Pomona, CA will be decided by online voting:
"YOU will vote for what bands you want to see get into the big show. There will be 3 rounds. As of now there are 28 bands who have signed up to be in the contest. Out of all the bands who end up signing on, you will vote for the top 15 then in the second round you will vote for the top 6 and for the last round only the top 3 vote getters will get into the big show. Whoever has the highest votes will get to choose what day they play. Go to the DSD website or click on this link and vote NOW http://vote.sparklit.com/web_poll.spark/805660 the first round of voting ends January 20th, The Second Round end January 31st and the last round ends February 14th and the WB 2 Site will be launched. The line up for the Wreckers Ball 2 @ The Glasshouse October 20th-31st will be announced."
So go vote, but please please pleeeease do all of us one little favor: if you friend/brother/sister/lover/whoever's band is in the contest, and they suck and you know it.....SPARE THE REST OF US AND DON'T VOTE FOR THEM! No one will know, you can lie about it - it is just a little white lie meant to protect their feelings, so it will be done out of goodwill and won't be counted against you when they're deciding your fate... in hell. >;-P
A very warm welcome to Frankie Gardener who arrived on the scene this morning. Big congratulations to Kelli and Kimm Gardener on their brand new son!
Kimm emailed this evening:
Wanted to drop you all a mesage that Mom and Baby are doing well as I write.....
Francis Cash Gardener was born today at 8:02 am. He weighed 8 lbs 12 oz and is 21" long.
Kelli is doing great and we are lucky that Frankie is off to a great start....Mom plans to come home Wednesday, as she hopes to be up and on her feet tomorrow!
Thanks again for all of your good wishes,
Kimm
Liz Ortega sent this email to me late last night to post to the Barflies.net Blog:
"To Kimm and Kelli Gardener--
Thoughts and prayers to Kelli and Kimm Gardener who will be receiving their bundle of joy today. Best wishes to your new baby boy, Frankie! May Kelli have a speedy recovery because there's a drink waiting for her at the bar!Cheers!
Liz Ortega
