Sunday, July 18, 2004

News?

Generally speaking, I think the claims that "the media" is left-biased are blown out of proportion, but this story has way too much coverage for something so small.  Why is it, that 40 people seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a news story that's been run for over a day on ABC network radio news?  So some guy paid for a showing in a 500 seat theater and 40-ish people who are Republicans showed up.  What does this prove?  That republicans are cheap?  Talk about a pointless "news" story.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Dropped

The folks at Slim-Fast have apparently dropped the ad campaign featuring Whoopi Goldberg because the were "unhappy" with her recent jabs at Bush during a political fundraiser. If they were smart, they would have dropped the ads because she hasn't done any watch able work in a decade. It's time to take some time off Whoopi; you couldn't possibly need more money. Besides these Slim-Fast ads were the worst featuring a celebrity since the terrifyingly bad Pier One ads with Kirstie Alley. Why bother spending extra money on a name, when all you're going to do is make them as annoying as possible?

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

You Think You Know Them

Saturday night I had the chance to finally see Cause & Effect live after about a decade of wanting to, and it was an interesting experience. The band put on a good show, and it was obvious why they were signed to a major label back when electronic pop got some exposure from major labels (which it is again, after years of neglect).
I got there, after finding an amazingly close parking spot, as Subimage were finishing their set. Chris, Subimage's singer/songwriter, did some great dancing and did as well as I've ever seen an opening band do in getting the crowd involved. I was impressed, and picked up their album after the show. It's a great album, and they had a real massive sound on stage, so they are well worth checking out live.
Cause & Effect did a lengthy set, and played most of their recent release, The Sunrise EP which is a return to form after their miserable guitary "Innermoststation" album from the late 90's. The band looked fit, and keyboardist Keith was wearing a Halou shirt, and since Halou are from San Francisco and have worked with C&E I assume their were in the crowd somewhere. Rob was a great front man, and I appreciated his attempts at getting the crowd to dance, but his guitar was way too loud. I've noticed this problem at many an electronic show, where the guitars are mixed way too loud. It's not the bands fault, but when your synths are providing a minimum of four instruments at a given time, it seems odd that the guitar would be louder than all of them. Hard to pick one highlight from the show, but I really loved the ballad-y "Stay" off "The Sunrise" EP, and the contemporary re-working of "You Think You Know Her" was great. It's just a shame they lost so much of the crowd to the time of night by the end of their set. We all get older I guess...

I Take Pictures

Photographic pictures. Bright light. Dark room...Oh sorry, got lost in an early Depeche Mode reference there. So a while back I was at the Dekadance Radio Show 20th Anniversary Concert with bands like Faith Assembly, Regenerator, Bizarre Love Triangle, and my favorite Bay Area synthpop group Moonlife and while I was there I took a few pictures. I hadn't used my digital camera in the dark before, so almost nothing came out. However, I emailed a couple pictures each out and much to my suprise one of my pictures end up on the Moonlife site (slightly lightened up by the band so you can see them).

Monday, July 05, 2004

Independence (A Bit Late)

While I couldn't get blogger to work yesterday, I thought I would still post this link that my grandmother sent me. It's a bit like a non-violent version of missile command, and while it's no mindsweeper, it's still a decent way to kill a few seconds.