Like most of you, Star Wars is an oddly gigantic part of my life. I really don’t think there’s a movie more important to me than The Empire Strikes Back. Of course I have to acknowledge that there are films that are objectively “better,” but the original trilogy is one of the few things that can still elicit in me a childlike sense of wonder. But, sadly, George Lucas has led us astray over the past 15 or so years.

The prequel trilogy has become synonymous with abject failure in our modern cultural vernacular, much like M. Night Shyamalan or the Detroit Lions. Which, of course, is totally depressing. The thing is, there are plenty of films that are much worse than The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. But compared to what they could have, and should have been they pretty much could not have missed the mark more.

I was flipping through my collection of old Star Wars comics recently and on the cover of issue #5 (art by Dave Dorman by the way, the best Star Wars illustrator ever), I noticed this headline on the front: “News! George Lucas Announces New Star Wars Movies!!” With a heavy heart I flipped to the article and looked back to a time when the new trilogy was not only a bright light in the future, but was presumed to be the biggest movie event, well, ever.

Reading through the article is actually quite sad, as the author is obviously over-the-moon excited. Strangely enough though, he has a Nostradamus moment and wonders whether Lucas will misguidedly market the film towards children based on toy and video game sales. Bet he never saw Jar Jar motherfuckin’ Binks coming though.

The reason I bring all this up now? Well the web is once again rampant with rumors that George Lucas has started development on yet another trilogy. This time a set of sequels, most likely episodes 7,8, and 9, though some are saying he’s going for 10-12 first. Which implies there will at some point be six new Star Wars movies. Which is fucking nuts. For all intents and purposes, this is like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

And yet, some part of me wants this to happen. I guess my feeling is how much goddamn worse could it get? Somewhere between the Star Wars Holiday Special and that Clone Wars movie, rock bottom was hit right? And maybe a fresh start with new characters from the expanded universe is just what the best Science Fiction epic ever told needs to get back on track. George Lucas, may the force be with you on this one.

SO yeah…sort of self-explanatory. You go through your life, and you find music (or movies, or books, or whatever) that can somehow define you…they sum up whatever it is you think you are or want to be for a particular time, place…whatever. But then time goes by. Dubstep happens. You realize that some of your favorite music is surprisingly difficult to play in the background while you work. Whatever. So they slip…into the mist. They’ll always be your favorite, but, well, when’s the last time you actually heard them?

Here are my toppers. There are of course many more where these came from…but, O reader…what are your top 5 favorite albums that you haven’t heard in more than a year?

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1) At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command (2000)

Between ‘Arcarsenal’ and ‘Cosmonaut’, this album is a complete and total fucking juggernaut…and yet: I haven’t listened to it in EASILY 4 years. That might be because my mp3 copy of it skips like a motherfucker, or it might be that I want to remember it as it is. I could see ‘De-Loused in the Comatorium’ making this list, too, but it’s disqualified for being the same people.

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2) The Fire Theft – S/T (2003)

I think ‘Uncle Mountain’ is probably the best thing Jeremy Enigk has ever done. I might think that because it’s been a long time since I listened to it, or because it’s been an even longer time since I listened, to, like, Diary, but I’m pretty sure I think ‘Uncle Mountain’ is probably the best thing Jeremy Enigk has ever done.

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3) Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral (1994)

You hang on my every word, and as such my love for all things Reznor is well known to you. So you realize how weird it is that I never listen to this album. Maybe I just know it too well that I want to space it out a bit…I always catch remixes or b-sides, but this actual album rarely gets spun here. I’d like to find a place and time when I can hear ‘March of the Pigs’ for the first time again. Yes. That would be nice. ‘Eraser’ is probably one of his most underrated, too.

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4) Gatsbys American Dream – Ribbons & Sugar (2003)

You have either never heard of this, never heard this, or heard it once and hated it. I have never found anyone—besides my wife…our guilty pleasure—who loves this album as much as me. Let’s just say that it’s a pop-punk album loosely based on ‘Animal Farm.’ Let’s just say that and call it good. Except to say that I saw them once with Bear vs. Shark and it was a pretty good show.

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5) 2pac – All Eyez on Me (1996)

This album, I think, is equal parts rap renaissance and, um, death rattle. Really. But it’s so fucking awesome…so totally unrepentantly gangster. I think I don’t listen to it for reasons stated above: that being that my mp3s of it are of the lowest quality imaginable. Still, there was a time when ‘Picture me Rollin’ was THE anthem—sort of an aspirational anthem, if one will—that I would prefer to preserve in my memories. It’s almost like I’ve retired this album.

Click after the jump for two bonus albums that I love but just never listen to.

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What a TERRIBLE title! It is on you now, O reader: the knowledge that for the entire time that I’m typing this post, I will be thinking about that title, how awful it is, and what might be better. But! Paradox!! Now that I’ve written it’s utter shitbaggery into this amazing and super-Meta narrative, I cannot, in good taste, go back and change it. It’s like a double-edged sword, this blogging game. That, or a sword where one side is an edge and the other side is a bag of garbage.

Anyway. What do I have for you today? I have a huge box of cards. That’s right: trading cards. Memorabilia. While creeping and crawling around up in my attic—making room for all the shit that needed to clear out of Baby Buster’s new nursery (O you fly? Man, my crib’s got cribs in ‘em…) and I came across a regular old bin…just like the rest of them. But! when I cracked it open, it wasn’t full of old Dunnies, or old t-shirts that were either too big or too small, or old books (like all the rest): It had apparently been designated as the card box at some point long ago, and as such, it was a fucking mess.

But! That shouldn’t stop us from digging into the madness, should it?

I think I’ve used this archeological comparison before, but this bin is like a drill-core sample of my childhood. You can actually SEE! where I stopped caring about sports cards and started caring about comics. For good measure, there’s a healthy dose of Batman (the movie! duh.) and G.I. Joe mixed in. And then, right at the end…almost as if it was the icing on the cake, you can see when I forgot about comics and fell in love with Metallica.

I still have a healthy love for collectible cards/trading cards, but nothing like what it used to be. I went on the hunt about 4 years ago for the ‘Black Deck Tigers’ series of Bicycle playing cards, and I’ve got my much-laued Norman Saunders cards and Weird Wheels, but these days, it’s more about collecting jpegs of said cards. One of these days I’ll need to share my Rocky Horror and Star Wars card (jpeg) collections with you, O reader. But for now, you’ll have to make due with this, another time capsule from a time in my life when I was alive, living a different life.

Ok, Ok…what about “I Can Cardly Contain Myself”

No? I agree. They both suck. Oh well. Waaaaaaaay more photos after the jump!

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So. Yeah. Right. Not totally sure how to lead into this. Basically, the ‘essay’ presented below is a short piece I wrote with the intention of having it run in a small, 90′s-themed zine that, as happens with zines, never came out. No big deal. It’s been sitting, though—the essay below—and so I figured that someone might get some enjoyment out of having it posted here, on the Bloglin, and so it was both written and done. At once.

Let me just say that I realize how futile it may be to describe to someone the experience they did or did not have across a summertime. With regards to what they were reading, in relation to the music they were listening to. I get that. It’s…weird. I can say, however—in true Book Recommendation: form—that if you are a fan of Soundgarden, Faith No More, or Stephen King, in any capacity, you will likely find some enjoyment in the pages and bars that the below attempts to pay brief, poorly cited, yet breathless tribute to. I would absolutely LOVE to hear if any of you, fellow geeks, have had this experience before, or if you’re familiar with these works and do/don’t feel the same way. —Hateball

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Everyone knows the story: sometime around when the MGM Lion is roaring, cue up ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and then sit back and marvel at how amazingly it syncs up with the first part of ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Sure. All involved have (of course) denied that any relation or similarity or anything like that is totally and completely NOT intentional and, well, I believe them. It’s a stretch.

Still, though, it’s an interesting prospect. An interesting thing to think about: what if there are albums out there that are designed to be played alongside movies and it’s up to us–the fans–to sit there and just experiment to see which ones go with which? How awesome would that be?

To bring the whole question to another level of geekdom: how awesome would it be if the same theory held true for books? What if, along the course of reading a novel or story, you could set the events, settings, and characters of that story to music? What if that synchronicity actually enhanced your enjoyment of each: when you read the book, you think of the music…and when you hear the music, you think of the book?

So went my adolescent line of thinking in the fall and winter of 1994. I had just had an epiphany. It all made sense. Two of my favorite albums of all time—Soundarden’s Superunknown and Faith No More’s Angel Dust—had been spinning on repeat all summer. Over. And Over. At the same time, I had read and re-read what would become one of my favorite books of all time, The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Why was it—now that school had started again and I was returned to my ‘real’ life—that when I listened to them, I couldn’t shake these fantastic yet oddly familiar ‘memories’? Why did listening to “Kindergarten” make me think of escaping from pre-teen preppy werewolves and wading through waxy white bugs? What about “Land of Sunshine” made me think of being locked in a box for days at at time? How, for that matter, could I explain the general malaise I felt while listening to Superunknown? Neither my mind nor my soul had been stolen…but still.

I guess it makes sense to press pause for a second. Yeah. I realize that a high school kid spending his summer with books and music is pretty sad. I get it. And yes: I realize that the whole ‘soundtrack to a book’ thing doesn’t work quite as well as soundtracking a movie. The ‘synchronicity’ I’m talking about–I’m feeling–has much less to do with the timing involved with ‘read THIS part right as THIS song plays! Mindfuck!!’ and more to do with the overall mood that an album sets and then superimposing that mood—sharing it—with a mood set by a book. There are, however, certain songs that seem to speak towards certain parts of the book, but, well, that’s not my main point. My main point is…simultaneously super-deep and super-lame. But, well, I digress.

Was I imagining this connection? Did my specific, personal experience with these three works of art inform any sort of relation they had to one another? If I were to play any album on repeat while reading any book during any period in my life, would the same sort of bond appear? Would ‘B.O.B.’ become the soundtrack to Catcher in the Rye if I let it? I don’t’ think so (*though I do have the same sort of pre-memory with Stephen King’s The Stand and Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell…but that’s another story).

All I can really say is this: the sheer cinematic quality of both Angel Dust and Superunkown is unquestionable. Undisputable. The degree to which each album simultaneously tells a story AND sets a mood is uncanny. I’m positive that any resemblance those moods or stories have to my favorite book is purely coincidental. BUT! To this day, whenever I hear Mike Patton’s voice, I think of getting raped by a goat-man in a dive-bar bathroom. Those opening notes of “Let me Drown” will always bring the sickly-sweet taste of old wine to my lips as I cross over to the Territories.

My friend’s brother committed suicide two years ago. Checked himself into a hotel where rich plastic surgery patients check in to hide away from society while the scars heal. Blew his face off, not before texting some morbid epitaphs to family and a few friends. The guy was always a bit immature and emotionally underdeveloped… “troubled,” seems to be the right adjective to describe him all things considered. None of us believed it. Suicide is like black holes in deep outer space, or the bottom of the ocean to me… we’ll never be capable of comprehending it until we’re there.

It’s really sad. It’s created this debilitating vortex around his family and friends. His brother (my close friend) floats in and out of deep depression and guilt. He’s never going to be able to get over knowing that his little brother couldn’t confide his desperation to him. I really don’t blame him, and there’s nothing I can do to comfort him other than simply being there while he gets it all out. He’s better these days though, which is as good as it’s going to ever get.

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Endless, Nameless (Rejected Video) – Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA

Suicide is an exotic bird to classify. Are you trying to send the most powerfully charged message you can? Well, okay, but you’re too dead to be there to enjoy whomever’s pain you wanted to elicit. Seems like a lose-lose. A cry for help? Just ask. I’m here. Why leave a note? Seems like a selfish act toward whomever it’s addressed to.

The type of suicide that makes most sense to me is simply losing all hope in life and reality in general… but that’s a really dark hole to think about. We don’t know each other, but unless you are a child molester, DON’T DO IT. The people you think don’t care actually really do. We’re all just busy walking our own dogs to remind you.

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Territorial Pissings (1993) – Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada

Putting a loaded gun to your head is terrifying. Even putting an UNloaded gun in your hand is terrifying. Clean-up is an absolute nightmare. Brains, flesh, skull, blood, nerve endings, teeth, hair, tissue… all over. If I ever got so low that I was ready to do it, I would OD on some great drugs. Seems like the most fun of all the awful options.

Shooting myself in the face gets the silver prize because it’s quick and ostensibly painless. The one deal breaker about the gun is that I may not kill myself, only severely damage my brain and live out my misery as a vegetable.

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Heart Shaped Box (Last Live Performance 02/21/94) – Palasport, Modena, Italy

Bronze goes to jumping off a building… that’s a long way down, Jack, and you gotta take that first leap. The weightlessness may be blissful on the way down though, but stepping off?! Woah. After that, slicing the wrists seems like the best option, simply because of the aesthetics. Bonus because you’re in a warm bath. Putting your head in a slipknot has the same aesthetic quality to it, but the agony of asphyxia seems like a bummer.

My brother had a friend who hung himself in high school. The guy’s mom opened up the bedroom door and found the kid swinging in front of her. Can you imagine?

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Smells Like Teen Spirit (In Utero tour) – ????

Happy Kurdt Season everyone! Miss you Greg, and you too, Kurdt. So much.

We’re big fans of cassettes ’round these parts… especially the whole recent revival of tape labels. And we’re big fans of (and friends with) Dust La Rock and Michna, so how could we not post about this incredibly cool project both have undertook?

The spirit of collaboration between friends is exactly how Fool’s Gold got started in the first place. So it’s great to see projects like Mix The Orb take shape. This cassette-only mix is a labor of love between FG art director Dust La Rock and iconoclastic BK producer/DJ Michna, who linked up to dig through 20+ years of music by their favorite group, electronic pioneers The Orb.

The resulting mix is an awesomely heady trip worth dusting off your tapedeck for. There are 100 hand-numbered yellow Mix The Orb cassettes available now at Turntable Lab (and alongside the Fool’s Gold Vol 1 Compilation at Opening Ceremony boutiques starting next week).

Quite timely with The Orb‘s newly released collaborative album with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Metallic Spheres and a recent Choice Is Yours installments we did here on the Bloglin. Looks like everyone has got Orb on the brain!

This isn’t Dust’s first foray into working with a prominent DJ on a mix. You may recall that earlier this year he worked with Star Eyes on the Industrial and EBM banger, Ov Curse for us. I love that these guys decided not to do a digital release and strictly keep this mix as a tape. Knowing Dust I bet he won’t ever put up a download link of this (or maybe he will, who knows?).

They’re currently available at Turntable Lab and only 100 were produced… maybe when those are gone this will come online? Head over to the Fool’s Gold blog and read a short, but sweet interview with both Dust and Michna about making this mix.

Now I wonder if Dust will next move on to the KLF mix I remember him telling me about a few years ago. I wonder if he even remembers that conversation over lunch at Kellogs Diner? Either way KLF mix would be a great follow-up.

On a related side note: I went to college with a girl (that I had  a crush on) who was at one point dating the good doctor, Alex Patterson. I remember he came to visit one weekend and pandemonium ensued across campus on whether or not we were going to get our own Orb rave… we did not. But there was still some acid!

You would’ve thrown this shit out by now, right? As opposed to me, who—even now, obsessed with obsessing over it’s obviously overt obscolescence, O ya—still plans on writing about it, pretending to have a chuckle or two, and then—Ho!—putting it back up on the shelves at HateMart and forgetting about it until, Lo, some skywear brand hires a younger, stronger, better version of alt-me to mindcrime it into the consciousness of it’s citizen army in some long-distant, long-forgotten (by us, the oldest, for even that which has not happened is an eternity ago for those who have been, ever, forever, since before the beginning of never)…um…future.

Or something.

But what is it, O Hateball of this time, this place, and this continuum?

Well, friend, it is a full-functioning, robust and awesome Minidisc setup, complete with oodles of ‘fashion’ minidisc blanks, charger, super-duper G-Shock-like animating screen, and even a—get this—usb-to-optical signal converter for handy-dandy 1:1 recording music from your computer onto your portable device.

He that is ‘Business Partner of Hateball’ and I invested HEAVILY in this shit. For some reason. And that’s right…it was basically like a cross between a tape and a CD. Getting music onto these things was not just a drag, a drop, and a smile. It was cue it up and record it over…and all that implies. Mostly the waiting. It was mostly the waiting that was implied.

Even so, this player is a super-duper advanced MDLP (Mini Disc Long Play) setup…which is basically how cavemen used to say ‘It’s like an MP3 CD’. At the time (2001…?), this technology was like holyshitohmygoditdoeswhat?! and, well, I bought into it whole hog. ‘You can fit, like 5 albums on ONE DISC?!’ Id’ say. Yep, more or less. Yeah, that’s how it works. Duh.

What were people going nutso-butso over though? That’s right. The fucking remote on the headphone cord. That shit musta got dudes who were way better looking than me LAAAAID at the gym. Those rich bastards with their perfect business cards. Damn them.

Interestingly enough…for all those of you who are on the vinyl pulse of history…I purchased this device and the sparkliest, pinkest of the minidisc blanks from a little company called Minidisco. But! you may know them better as KidRobot. True Story. Pretty crazy, really.

And! And! As a bonus, here is a cinder block that I’ve painted white and chrome! OH wait, silly billy. That’s a Gen2 iPod! You know…the first one they had for windows? The one that was sync-able through MUSICMATCH? (Yeah, I didn’t remember that until I read the name on Wikipedia, either).

I’m pretty sure you get, like, an Aquaman-themed 10-gig USB device in your happy meal these days. Mostly sure. 60 percent. But still.

The moral, boys and girls. Ahem.: Don’t ever buy electronics that you think are cool. Buy electronics that you need. If you are a cool electronics person, you may as well make your consumer decisions based on what musicskins and DRM-compliant wallpapers are available for it.

For real.

Back in the Box, back on the shelf. And so—they say He says—it goes.

Vintage video by Deskee that’s pretty hilarious. Don’t ban House music… I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone thought it be believable that House wasin the cross-hairs of being banned, but I guess the video needed a plot and so here we are… Love the white dude with the flat top.

Via Lektro Girl

I was around 10 when Nirvana came around and had no reference for how much of a phenomenon they were at the time. I just figured that they were a cool band that wasn’t The Crüe. Plus, I was a fat kid watching MTV all day so I didn’t know any better. It’s a good thing these guys were legit.

This installment of Kurdt Season dusts up some early 90s interviews with the band. Nirvana interviews were great because they just said the most randomest shit on the regular… shit you never heard bands say on MTV. Looking back at these interviews, you can see how they just had the media so perplexed in how to package them. I was speaking to a guy who was in a rather big hair metal band in the 80′s and he was explaining how, literally overnight, MTV wasn’t accepting any videos unless it was “Grunge.” Nirvana just ruined it for all the jokers in the cowboy boots complaining about how she was only 17.

Rock journalism is a strange deal. How demoralizing is it to be 30 and have to ask kids how it feels to be the next big thing? Anything that has to do with music other than playing it or listening to it is bizarre.

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MTV Headbangers Ball (1991)

I used to watch The Ball religiously on Saturday nights waiting for them to play a Pantera video. The programmers must have known that all the Heshers across the country were doing the same because they would always play Walk or Mouth For War as the very last video.

No wonder all the old guard became so indignant toward Nirvana, look how silly Rachtman and that dumb set with all the skulls look… “the number 5 Skullcrusher?” For serious?! As much as I lament the bygone days of watching videos on MTV, this sort of media has no place in the world anymore.

I say hooray for the death of the rock star. Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em in the ear.

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British Tele (1991)

The only people I’ve come across who hate Nirvana were in their 20′s when Nevermind came out. I’ll bet it was super lame to like them if you were in college, like they were some divisive bandwagon shit. People who hate on bands because they didn’t find them first are stupid. Same goes for those who identify themselves through what music they listen to.

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Apparently at the Hard and Heavy building (???)

These dudes are so greasy looking in this clip. They’re greeeeeezzie. I don’t know about Krist’s jive about escalators, it’s on some trifling ethical nonsense that all the 90′s bands diarrheaed out. I’m down with the grifting advice they’re pushing though. Shut up and play already. This sucks.

I have made no bones about it, nor have I tried to hide the fact that I am addicted to Dave Mustaine. Er. Wait. I am addicted to keeping things. Sure, it helps if those things are things that I am interested in…things that have some value to either the outside world or to myself or—best—both. BUT! I have shown you that I am just as good at holding onto things that have no meaning to me or anybody else. And at length.

But here…here is where I take some time to get a few things off my chest…a few things that I’m more or less deeply ashamed of. These are things—sins—that I have committed against my belongings—my precious—that I cannot take back. Things—perfectly careless and stupid decisions that I’ve made—that can never be undone. I have ruined these things, and I have nobody to blame but myself.

And you know what? I shoulda known. I should have fucking known better. I may have already told the story of my long-lost G.I. Joe collection…the one that got away. This happened 15 years ago and I’m still bitching about it. Had I JUST climbed outta the ass of whatever girl I was chasing and come over to my dad’s house, asserted myself, and packed up all my beloved toys and sprung for some sort of storage space (on my meager high school wages, but still), I would have all that shit still. But no. I didn’t do that then, but what’s worse, I didn’t learn my lesson, that being:

Never make snap decisions about your most treasured items. Never-ever-ever live in the present when it comes to your collections. When you love something enough, you allow it to help you to live in the future, because if you don’t, and you fuck up, it’s loss or damage will force you to ever-live in the past. The Hell of Regret. Loss. Tragedy.

I was recently perchance to discover something heinous. Something heinous indeed. But before I blow my load, I’ll start with an evil not (exactly) pictured.

Back in 2002-2003, I purchased an early set of Dälek screenprints. The space monkey guy. I was so excited to get these awesome posters—it was the first set of Dälek screenprints I had seen, and as would later come to light, the man doesn’t produce many screenprints—that I went to Aaron Bros. and purchased a couple of 18×24″ frames to put them in once they arrived.

Fail. They came. They were not 18×24 as had been advertised (and as how I would come to find out most posters that are advertized as 18×24 are not. I could rant at length about this but won’t.) I got so mad that I forced them into the frame, damaging the bottom of both, and tearing—TEARING!!!!—the area with the signature. Bloodlust. The thought of it is making me shudder.

But, like the horse said to the turkey, that’s just the tip of it. Enter: the god-damned framing place at the mall. Here’s a stolen pic (expresso beans) of the only internet evidence of this print’s existence:

I assure you that the above is on the other side of this print. I cannot show you, because of all the glue:

A piece of advice, for any of you wanting to save a little money on custom framling by taking a print or poster to Aaron Bros., Michael’s, um, any shop in the mall…they will wet mount your artwork. ”

Wet Mount” is a fancy way of saying that they’ll spray the back of your artwork with adhesive and then burnish it down onto a piece of foamcore before putting it into the frame. It is…terrible. Just terrible. Ruinous and evil.

Even more terrible, however, is when they wet mount a two-sided screenprint.

Worse still is when they tell you that that’s what they’re gonna do and you—like a goddamned idiot—tell them to go ahead.

The worst, however, is when you can’t even find the print online to illustrate what you’re talking about. All you can find is a second edition of the print that’s on the OTHER SIDE that got produced 5 years after you ruined yours.

Just for good measure, I figured I’d throw in a poster I got framed at the same time—one that did not fall prey to the subsequent sagging and bubbling of the SSUR print—but that is trapped inside it’s current frame forever and ever nonetheless, as it has been verily glued to it’s backing surface. What a shame.

And a poster for two of my alltime favorite artists, for a tour that was forsurely one of the greatest music moments of the 90s. Sigh.

The fight was a fake, go kill yourself. An Action Jackson way of saying FML.

Learn from me, sons of Hasbro. Sons of Topps. Sons of Galooooooooob. Do not fall prey to the regret of melted Joes. Of armless He-Men. Be careful. Surround yourself with junk everlasting, so that you too may die with a smile upon your face, guns full of flame, ever-ready for that great big forum in the sky.