Chateu de Rouge et Bleu

The Creepshow - Sell Your Soul

2009-01-12T02:41:00.000-08:00

All the way in Ontario (which I'm told, along with Montreal, is a haven for rockabilly and psychobilly culture) comes a band which I'm quite fond of- the Creepshow. Fast paced songs, catch lyrics, and a hot singer all catch my eyes and ears. They do have a couple slows songs, notably "The Garden", which happens to be a personal favourite. Now this record is from 2006, when Hellcat was still in the band, later to be replaced by her sister so she could raise her children, and they do hve another album. I'm not to fond of it though. Sell Your Soul shows a fuck you attitude about having fun and makin' music they all like.

Wonder what this does…

Twilight

2008-10-17T02:16:00.000-07:00

I recently have been hearing about this series (mostly from my female friends mind) and was recommended and given it to borrow by a good friend. The book is engaging, but obviously directed to female audiences. The story, for those who haven't read the book, is about a girl named Bella who moves to an eternally cloudy town in Seattle (what I wouldn't kill to live there mind) and falls in love with a "vegetarian" vampire named Edward. It progresses to his and her interaction with his "family" and other vampires that want to kill her. The book is reminiscent of the Harry Potter series in that it blends the typical teenage angst with the supernatural, engaging readers to continue reading. I'm going to admit I couldn't put it down, but the story dragged, especially when Bella constantly bitched about her feelings. I had a curiosity and a fondness for these kinds of novels where there's a secret world behind closed doors and that let me into it.

The characterization is great on Bella, but the rest of them all fell flat, even Edward. He was so predictably emotional and it wore on ones nerves. He was a mesh of overly protective lover and father figure, always in pain that he was in love with Bella and he might hurt her. Don't get me wrong it was cute. To a point. Bella and Edward's conversations were always the same; bickering, followed by cute lovey-dovey exchanges, followed by questioning eachother's lives, followed by bickering, repeat. I guessing I'm missing the undying love (no pun intended) for Bella that Edward has for her, but it seemed too one dimensional to get any real depth out of it. Bella is constantly saying how star struck she is by Edward's beauty. We get it. You wanna fuck the shit out of him. Lets move along. The other characters are no better. They seem like statues in a garden that just talk with Bella every so often and Meyer does little to show they have any actual depth (which Edward says they don't really).

The simplicity of language really does make the story flow, sprinkled with some high vocabulary to enrich younger minds, but over all, the story fell flat. As said previously, the lack of depth in any other character besides Bella and her consistent emotional trips limits the audience to girls 14 to 19 (I should pray anyone over that demography doesn't degrade their minds with such easy fiction) and thus caves into stereotypical female novel motifs; over exaggerated feelings, romance, limited violence only to enhance the emotional bond in the romance.

Over all a light read. Nothing revolutionary or thought provoking at all. Certainly not something I would reread or buy, but something light to pass my time when I'm constantly bored. I just don't see why its getting all the hype its getting.

Hilltop Hoods

2008-10-05T23:52:00.001-07:00

Fusing an entire string orchestra (The Adelaide Symphony to be precise) and Hilltop Hood's Hard Road album into a mesh of amazing classical / hip hop goodness, Hilltop Hoods has once again reaffirmed my faith in hip hop. I'm not a huge fan of rap and hip hop but these guys deliver it. No stupid songs about what a girl wears or "Solja Boy" or how fast she get her ass to shake, this is social album about the harshness of life. Highly recommended.

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Beirut : The Black Sessions

2008-10-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

A Passage from Vonnegut

2008-10-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not a spiritual person, but this passage resonated in me so well I could not forget it. Vonnegut's ideas are so complex and sometimes seen as out there, but his words are magical and simplistic that anyone can read and relate to them, if you get past his complex story structures.

“The Universe has expanded so enormously,” he said, “with the exception of the minor glitch it puts us through, that light is no longer fast enough to make any trips worth taking in even the most unreasonable lengths of time. Once the fastest thing possible, they say, light now belongs in the graveyard of history, like the Pony Express.
“I now ask this human being brave enough to stand next to me to pick two points of obsolete twinkling light in the sky above us. It doesn’t matter what they are, except that they must twinkle. If they don’t twinkle, they are either planets or satellites. Tonight we are not interested in planets or satellites.”

I picked two points of light maybe ten feet apart. One was Polaris. I have no idea what the other one was, for all I know, it was Puke, Trout’s star the size of a BB.
“Do they twinkle?” he said.
“Yes they do,” I said.
“Promise?” he said.
“Cross my heart,” I said.
“Excellent! Ting-a-Ling!” he said. “Now then, whatever heavenly bodies these two glints represent, it is certain that the Universe has become so rarefied that for light to go from one to the other would take thousands of millions of years. Ting-a-ling? But I now ask you to look precisely at one, and then precisely at the other.”
“OK,” I said, “I did it.”
“It took a second, do you think?” he said.
“No more,” I said.
“Even if you’d taken an hour,” he said, “something would have passed between where those two heavenly bodies used to be, at, conservatively speaking, a million times the speed of light.”
“What was it?” I said.
“Your awareness,” he said. “That is a new quality in the Universe, which exists only because there are human beings. Physicists must from now on, when pondering the secrets of the Cosmos, factor in not only energy and matter and time, but something very new and very beautiful, which is human awareness.”

Trout paused, ensuring with the ball of his left thumb that his upper dental plate would not slip when he said his last words to us that enchanted evening.

All was well with his teeth. This was his finale: “I have thought of a better word than awareness,” he said. “Let us call it soul.”
He paused.
“Ting-a-Ling?” he said."

Welcome

2008-10-02T03:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome. The Name's Andrew~

My mission: display my and other artists works which I feel has some relevance to my life, tell stories of trivial things that make my day, toss some music your way and hope you have some recommendations for myself and others.

Pardon if I'm a bit dry or rant sometimes, its just who I am really.