What’s old is always new. I have been a little obsessed with the fashion of mountain gear from the seventies and eighties. I’m talking technical gear from winters past including early uses of Gore Tex, waxed canvas and other wind stopping materials. A few companies have tried to revisit the old classics including Supreme and Penfield but it’s not quite the same as a vintage piece that could have been worn by some super dad.
In some of my more recent blurfing (blog surfing? No, forget that) I stumbled upon a blog and Flickr account that makes me a little envious. It seems that Nicolas from One-Upmanship has a similar interest in outerwear and has documented his collection from the golden age on his Flickr account. Sierra Designs, Peter Storm, Berghaus and a grip of other mountain armor companies are in the mix with boots to match. I feel like a hypebeast again. Fuck.
We got a visit recently from a very special guest, who came by the Мишка store to snap a few flicks. This is one guest who has kept himself busy over the years with various endeavors, ranging from photography to chandelier fabrication. I’m talking about Adam Wallacavage,the man behind our Cthulu-inspired chandelier.
Adam has been documenting various subterranean aspects of pop culture for years now, but it was his knack for fabricating the most gorgeous chandeliers that drew us to contact Adam. And shortly before the opening of our first store, success! Adam’s awesome creation lurks above, in the center of our 350 Broadway store.
This is the wild concoction that Adam cooked up for our 350 Broadway location: a gnarly octopus chandelier, forged in our signature colorway, topped off with some bugged out eyeballs. Oh Adam, you know us so well! But if you’re as big a fan of Adam’s as we are, you might want to keep an eye out for a few more projects coming soon, featuring Adam Wallacavage and ourselves.
Our Spring 2010 collection is right around the corner and we need to make some room to house it all! So now until January 31st, almost everything online and in-store is 30% off. Seriously, Spring 2010 is the largest collection we’ve ever done and we need all the room we can spare in our warehouse so help us out over here and buy this crap!!!
Portraits of Past reunited back in 2008 to play their 1995 LP, 01010101 at a handful of shows around the country. This is their entire performance at 924 Gilman St. space in Berkeley, California.
Apologies for our last post about a Rinse.FM competition but unfortunately Plastician was snowed in and was not able to get to the radio station. This time we’re on point and I will be co hosting alongside Nomad and Plastician, this monday night at 11pm (UK time, 6pm US) on Rinse.FM!
Tune in for a chance to win a mystery Mishka prize and get your fix of the newest in grime and dubstep served up by the best in the game! Check out last week’s podcast and warm up for this next one!
It seems unlikely at first blush that an album could be simultaneously more optimistic and more melancholy (and not just a little either way), but one listen to Beach House’s third release and suddenly anything seems possible: ecstasy and desperation not just in the same song, but the same verse, the same notes. Of course, teen love (or lovesickness) feels precisely so schizophrenic, and the album’s title is a free pass for explaining away the complexity. The Drums, Wavves, all those artists that throw themselves back into the high-school fray long enough to search steady for the sadness in it—maybe Beach House is simply reverting, too.
Except I don’t think that’s totally true. Even without the snoozefest circular argument about intent and meaning (including, of course, a lot of speculation about the symbolism of the album being recorded in a converted church), it’s pretty easy to see that the Baltimore dream-pop pair are moving forward, not back, in every conceivable way. Forget the spare minimalism of previous releases—Teen Dream is gigantic and gorgeously overwhelming, an album that doesn’t showcase the band at its best so much as it does an almost brand-new band. “Norway” charges in on a thump of drums, exploding into Alex Scally’s gilded guitars and a melody that slips sea-sickly in and out of tune. And the deathly sweet “Lover Of Mine” skitters from funereal to hopeful (a perfect lullaby either way) with Victoria Legrand’s voice a tangle of Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux. The whole thing is shimmery and propulsive—not a thick fog, but what it feels like to drive straight out of it.
There are, of course, more familiar moments: “Silver Soul” channels Mazzy Star in the way so characteristic of Beach House, and the simple piano jaunt of “Used To Be” could be an abandoned, dressed-up cut from 2008′s Devotion. And sure, the album does at times trade charm for expanse; all that reverb, that huge sense of space, tends to drown out the most subtle bits of personality. But rest assured: those moments are rare. Overall, Teen Dream is an intense reach skyward for a duo never content to sit on their laurels—even if they have to hit some confusing, complex emotional notes to get there.
Back in April 2009, I reviewed the pilot episode of the BSG prequel series, Caprica. Almost a year later, the series began its run on SyFy on Friday night. Instead of re-upping the pilot, just check out my review from April.
My feelings are still the same: I thought the pilot was great and handled a large roster of characters well. I have faith that Ron is going to retain the mood and themes that made BSG the show we loved. The storytelling still has that same grand drama feel minus the spacecraft. New episodes air on Fridays so I’ll see you on Saturdays with the Re-Ups!
As I’m writing this week’s Round-Up, I’ve got the second disc of Friday the 13th: The Series going in the background. I’m on an episode called “Hellowe’en.” This midget demon just tripped and accidentally stabbed herself. Then it just like disappeared. Nuts. Anyway,what a week!
• Special guest writer James Greene Jr. interviewed Pigboy from the MOTU movie. Pigboy was played by the luckiest boy in the world circa 1987, Ryan Szponder. The interview features some exclusive photos and dirt from the behind the scenes of MOTU. Everyone wins. Thank you James and Ryan!
• Ninjasonik’s new mixtape, Strictly 4 My Hipstaz, dropped this week, featuring new mixes, unreleased tracks, and special guest Ease DaMan. Ease’s Twitter wallpaper is pretty gnarly.
• Ellen Stagg is heading back to LA to shoot the likes of Asi Akira and Mandy Morbid. Keep your eyes and pants peeled for those photos.
• Hustler has some fresh porn parodies coming out in 2010, including This Aint Curb Your Enthusiasm XXX and This Aint Glee XXX. Most importantly though, they’re planning an Avatar porno. I think I’m required to see it.
• Choice Is Yours vol. 62 pitted Stone Temple Pilot’s Core against Sixteen Stone from Bush. This installment featured some heated, personal comments. Enjoy.
• This week’s Fear of a 12th Planet discussed New World Order extraordinaire, Albert Pike. Check it out here.
• There were plenty of top rated albums this week to keep your ears occupied: % from Dinowalrus, theA Thousand Voices EP from My Gold Mask, The Colossus from RJD2, the S/T EP from Passions, and IRM from Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Wow, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better (worse) for our Juggalo brothers (and sisters) they are now being accused of being a street gang?!
Ever since the debacles known as Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, I think a lot of people forget that Joel Schumacher is a good director who really knows how to make some entertaining movies. And while his last high profile flick (the Jim Carey thriller, The Number 23) was so bad that calling it awful is being kind, this is still the man who brought us horror/thriller classics The Lost Boys, 8mm, and Flatliners. With Town Creek (Blood Creek in the US), Schumacher regains much of the form that made his great films so damn good.
The best way I can describe the premise behind the film is this: the plot plays out like the lyrics of a really great Black Metal song… well, American Black Metal at least.
In the late 30s, the Third Reich sends Professor Richard Wirth to stay with a recently emigrated German family, the Wollners, at their farm in Maryland. The reason for Wirth’s visit has to do with a mysterious stone rune that the Wollners used as part of their barn’s foundation. This rune was left behind by the Vikings (who the Reich believe to be their ancestors) when they first discovered the Americas, and according to ancient texts, is said to contain the secrets to immortality! And so Professor Wirth settles in and begins his quest to unravel the secrets of eternal life. Fast forward to the present day and we find Evan Marshall, a local paramedic, who spends his life caring for his ailing father and his brother Victor’s (Dominic Purcell, of Prison Break fame) family ever since his disappearance from a camping trip 2 years ago. When Victor suddenly returns late one night to his brother’s bedroom, battered and bedraggled, he begs Evan to ask no questions… only to get his guns, some ammo and trust his brother. Victor needs Evan’s help with some unfinished business with his former captors until anyone can know that he is still alive. But Victor warns… “If you do this with me, nothing will ever be the same again”.
What transpires next is a non-stop rollercoaster ride, filled with blood-soaked revenge, a crash-course on occultism, Nazi/Nordic lore, and a lot of demonic animal slaughter. Sure the film has pretty big lapses in logic and the CGI at times can be pretty amateurish (though not bad enough to detract from how terrifying horses, especially demonic ones, can be inside your home), but none of this takes away from how entertaining of a movie this is from start to finish.
I really wish I had seen this last year when it came out, as it no doubt would have been one of my top Horror flicks for 2009, but I get the sense that NO ONE really saw this film. Town Creek is the sort of film you hope shows up at 2am on Showtime 2 when you’re dealing with a bout of insomnia. This not only has cult classic written all over it, it actually sets up very nicely for a horror franchise in the vein of Phantasm and Salem’s Lot.
