I just finished listening to Guns N’ Roses newest album, Chinese Democracy. 

For years…for over a decade, GnR fans have been awaiting the release of the elusive Chinese Democracyalbum.  After alienating/firing all of the original members of the original Guns n’ Roses including the irreplaceable Slash and Duff McKagan, Axl started working on the GnR album that he said would end all Guns n’ Roses albums.

Did it work?  Did it happen?

I don’t think so.

The opening song, ‘Chinese Democracy’ is awesome.  The very first thing you hear is Axl’s signature shriek as the music starts to build.  As a first single, I think it will really make GnR fans say, “Holy shit!  Guns N’ Roses is still awesome!”  Then, they will hear the next song, ‘Shackler’s Revenge’ and be weirded out.  It’s a good song, and I’m not saying that bands can’t evolve and change their sound, but Industrial GnR?  Ugh.  It’s like mixing Coca-Cola with Orange Juice.  I like both, but I don’t want them together.  I don’t want Industrial rock blasting over Axl Rose.

Then there are a few piano ballads.  I know the piano was a huge part of the Use Your Illusionalbums, and I understand that Axl loves playing that particular instrument.  But at least on the Use Your Illusion albums, the piano was complimented by shredding guitars and heavy bass lines.  On Chinese Democracy, there are some Electronica beats mixed into piano fellating that would make Elton John’s jams sound Heavy Metal.  Ugh.

If this album were not released under the band name Guns N’ Roses and instead released as The Axl Rose Band, it would make a lot more sense.

I give this album a B- (and that is being generous)

There are some very good songs on the album.  If you feel the need to get the whole album, you can get it on iTunes for $9.99.  Or, if you just want the really good songs, here they are:

“Chinese Democracy”
“If the World”
“Catcher in the Rye”
“I.R.S”
“Madagascar”

That’s all you really need to hear.  Again, the album is not bad, and I can’t complain since I kind of just ended up with a free copy of it a few days before it was released.  Still, if you are a hardcore (or even casual) fan of GnR, don’t expect great things.

That being said, I am going to go listen to Use Your Illusion I and Appetite for Destruction – REAL Guns N’ Roses albums.

Holy bejesus, this is hilarious.  As I was working on THE BOOK this evening, my friend and former co-worker Mike “I’ve Got a Boner for WWII History” McKenna sent me an invite to his new group on Facebook called “Yes on 8.1 - Ban Divorce.”  I didn’t read through what it was about and didn’t even take heed of the decimal Prop number.  Mike is a tree-hating, Commie-stomping Republican (or at least he used to be.  Maybe CA gayed him all up), so I figured it was just another cause supporting an über-conservative agenda.  Then I went back and read the actual subtle/hysterical platform for the group after observing the finely-crafted logo:

Prop. 8 was a good start in protecting marriage. By passing Prop. 8, Californians made it clear that the only way to preserve monogamous, life-long relationships protected by law was to prevent homosexuals from entering into monogamous, life-long relationships protected by law.

Makes sense right? Of course it does.

However, the struggle to protect marriage is not over. We need to go further. We need to destroy the one thing that has threatened traditional marriage throughout history: the willful termination of marriages by those in them.

The solution is obvious. We must ban divorce. Join with us to encourage Californians to target this problem by putting a proposition on the ballot next year to eliminate divorce.

This past election day we decided who gets to marry. Now let’s decide who has to stay married.

I immediately joined this group.  I think you should, too.  Joining awesomely hilarious causes is awesome, wouldn’t you agree?  Shit yeah, you would.

Don’t be gay.  Support and Join Prop 8.1

Sometime in 2005 or 2006, I got a MySpace page.  I did it because all of the other kids were doing it, and I felt like being part of a giant community of retards.  So I had a MySpace page.  I still have that MySpace page.

I hate MySpace.  I loathe almost everything about it.  I hate the emoticons, I hate the retarded surveys, I hate the eye-burning profiles with flashing pics that I am convinced will eventually kill an epileptic.  I hate most people’s attempt to be cool on MySpace.  I hate that most people on MySpace look nothing like their pictures in real life.  Did I mention the surveys?  GRRRRRR!  I hate the surveys.  I hate that an actual sub-dialect of the English language has been forged and spread virally because of that obnoxious “social networking” site.  I know what WTF means, but for the life of me, I am still trying to figure out what FTW is.  Does it mean “Fuck The What?”  Maybe “Fuck The World?”  How about “Fuel The Wombat?”  OMG LOLZ WWJD GRRRRR!

So I hate MySpace.  I have considered deletzorging my MySpacesz for a long time now, but I recently got back in touch with several members of my extended family I have not seen in years.  They have MySpace pages and don’t hold quite the contempt that I do for that site.  For that reason, and for that reason only, have I decided to keep my MySpace page.  Also, I do enjoy messing with nit-wits like this guy.

So, I eventually jumped on the Facebook bandwagon.  It was just at social and just at networky as MySpace, but the IQ level of the people on Facebook seemed to be more in the range of average intelligence than that of the 80 IQ MySpace E-tards (get it? Like retards except…whatever).

Here are some of the cool features of Facebook:

- I can usually search for you by your real name.  A name that doesn’t involve stars or happy faces or flashing pieces of shit.

- There is a Scrabble feature on Facebook.  I LOVE Scrabble.  I’m like a Scrabble Savant.  I dare you (DARE you) to step to my word pimping!

- Through Facebook, I was able to get back in touch with a whole shload of people I knew years ago.  I am sure if I waded through the shitpile of profiles on MySpace, I would be able to find the same people, but I don’t have time for that sort of nonsense.

I am not sure if I can think of any other reasons I like Facebook more than MySpace.  Oh wait!  There is an addicting little application on that site called “Pirates.”  It’s pretty much all about being a pirate and looting and burying gold.  It sounds a bit lame, but it’s like fucking Internet crack cocaine.  YAAAAR!

So, aside from the real names and Scrabble and Pirates application, there really isn’t anything remarkable about Facebook.  But there isn’t anything that really bothers me.  That is…

Until I became the victim of Superpokes!  Oh.My.Bleeding.Jesus.  Have you ever been at a restaurant, and some kid is yelling and screaming and making all kinds of stupid noise while you are trying to eat your favorite dish?  Eventually, your food just starts to taste like hate and all you want to do is grab that kid and throw him at the group of servers who are singing their “cool” version of “Happy Birthday” to the drunken skanks at the table next to you.  You know the feeling, right?  Is it just me?  Anyways, that same fury is what I feel when I get Superpoked.  Except it’s like that kid keeps coming back over and over again.

What is a Superpoke?  It’s like a steroid-enhanced poke laced with absurdity.  On Facebook, you can standard “poke” someone, which is in essence a cute way of nudging someone and saying hi.  But with Superpokes, you don’t just get “poked” by someone.  You get forced into a corner and electronically sodomized by them.  For example, I shamelessly browsed through my Facebook messages on my BlackBerry the other day and noticed that So-and-So had “Thrown a sheep at me.”  And guess what?  What’s-his-face had “Made a taco for me.”  Oh, and Hooray! What’s-her-name “Skipped school with me.”

Holy shit!  If you threw a sheep at me in real life, I would….I don’t know.  Who the shit throws a sheep?  If you made a taco for me, I would thank you but I would feel kind of weird.  And skip class?  Really?  Where are we going?  To the abandoned shack in the woods to smoke cigarettes?  Jesus.

But really, it’s not the absurdity of the Superpokes that bothers me.  I like absurd things.  Like way more than most people.  It is the frequency at which Superpokes occur.  When I log onto Facebook, I have like a zillion (literally) notifications letting me know I have been assaulted with a sheep or served Mexican food or asked to bail on my high school studies or whatever.  It is overwhelming.  The people who developed this application made it so that there are levels of Superpokes you can perform as well.  In order to “level up” for these pokes… I mean Superpokes, you have to annoy the balls off someone like me.  It just makes the Superpokers more determined to get me to roundhouse my pets.

So stop fucking Superpoking me!  I just removed the application for Superpokes that was on my profile, but I am still getting fucking Superpoked!

AAAAAAARRRRRGGH!

I recently got a Twitter account.  It is way better.  It’s a nice little micro blogging/status updating site. If you are like me and hate having livestock tossed your way several times a day I encourage you to get a Twitter account.  It is way less irritating.

Make sure to check out www.thesestoriesaretrue.com for the live election coverage this evening.  8:00 PM EST, bitches.

NO SPOILERS HERE

Meggie and I just saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno.  I will say this first: the way I know this is a good movie is because I enjoyed it the whole way through in the theater, I would easily go see it again (if someone wants to buy an outrageously overpriced ticket for me), and I will most definitely get it on DVD when it comes out.

So, the movie was good.

Right now, I have more criticism for Lisa Schwarzbaum’s (Entertainment Weekly) review of the movie.  If I could make a character judgement of Lisa using just three words, it would be “stuck up bitch.”

Meggie always says (jeez, that makes me sound like Forrest Gump) that most movie critics are just bitter people who like to tear up movies because they couldn’t make it as a star/writer/director/fluffer themselves.  (And no, I am not bitter that I am not a movie critic.)

Lisa Schwarzbaum’s entire review can be found here.  What I want to do is sort through some of her criticisms and explore why she is probably a lonely, self-hating woman who constantly wonders why she can’t find a man (or a woman, not that that is a bad thing):

Before I even read the full review, I immediately realized Lisa Schwarzbaum is likely a bitter woman.  Her title says it all:

*Review: ‘Zack and Miri’ is stupid and sophomoric*

Something in this review title told me Lisa Schwarzbaum probably thought Sideways was “A Brilliant Triumph.”  I’m not saying that I thought Sideways was was a piece of pretentious crap (I thought it was a piece of pretentious crap), but it seems like the kind of movie Lisa would drag a blind date to see and then wonder why he left to go to the bathroom and never came back while she was in the middle of praising how groundbreaking it is (Sideways not her ability to get a date).

I disagree that the film is “stupid.”  It is not a thinking piece, for sure, but it is not stupid.  And “sophomoric?”  Of course it’s sophomoric.  It’s a Kevin Smith film.  Kevin Smith writes movies laced with the f-word and dick jokes because Kevin Smith knows that this is what his fans want to see.

The dilemma facing Zack and Miri is that the two roommates, friends since 1st grade (not high school, did you watch the movie Lisa?) are broke, don’t make too much money, and are on the verge of being evicted after their utilities are shut off. 

Lisa writes:

The Zack-and-Miri version of thinking big? Maybe homemade porn will pay the bills. (Zack the java monkey’s minimum-wage job at a Starbucks knockoff would make presidential candidates weep with election-season empathy.) The pair even volunteer their own services, willing to “do” sex on screen if that’s what it takes to get the electricity turned back on.

First of all, why do you quote “do” in that?  Is it because at some point in the film “do” is substituted for sex?   With a fan base of 20 and 30-something aged fans, Kevin Smith probably recognizes that most of the viewers will wax nostalgic for the days when Beavis and Butthead looked at a blond bimbo and proclaimed they would “do her.”  It’s not such a bad thing, Lisa.  It’s just funny.

Also, you seem to look down on the main characters’ “version of thinking big.”  It’s a comedy about making a porno.  Maybe they would have had a different “version of thinking big” if the movie was called “Zack and Miri Make an Investment” or “Zack and Miri Make a Cure for Cancer,” or “Zack and Miri Find Osama Bin Laden.”

Lisa writes:

And what the amateur filmmakers recapitulate in the porno embedded within “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is the usual stuff of that proud son of New Jersey’s repertory, only with more giggling over boob jokes, gay jokes, mall jokes, panty jokes, and high-school-back-in-the-day jokes.

Again, with the underhanded comments.  “The proud son of New Jersey?”  And the kind of humor arsenal splattered through the film, including boob jokes, gay jokes and panty jokes?  Whys is that bad?  Those things are all comedy goldmines.  And again: Kevin Smith film.  When I want f-word laced jokes about retards, homosexuals, balls and masturbation (all the time, just an FYI), I pop Dogma, Chasing Amy or Mallrats into the DVD player.

Lisa then writes:

The simplistic message, however, is one any church pastor might give: Sex isn’t sexy without love, commitment, and fidelity. The established auteur who made “Clerks” (un and deux), “Mallrats,” and “Chasing Amy” may now be a 38-year-old husband and father who heads a successful production company, but he’s still got cheap advice for schlumpy twentysomething guys like Zack. (Zack’s notion of getting lucky at the reunion, FYI, is receiving some quickie manual stimulation from a bitter, married classmate who’s enraged because her husband is flirting across the crowded room.)

“[C]heap advice for schlumpy twentysomething guys like Zack?”  I don’t think Kevin Smith set out to advise twentysomething guys on how to solve their financial dilemmas, Lisa.  I think Kevin Smith wanted to make a funny movie about twentysomething guys (and gals).  Speaking from a twentysomething guy’s point of view, I can tell you that WE ALL LIKE PORNO (for its erotic and comedic values).  At some point, we have all fantasized, even if for just a minute, of being a porn star, and thought to ourselves, “Man, wouldn’t that be cool?  To get paid to fuck?”  Kevin Smith chose porn as the characters’ financial savior in this movie because it is the lowest common denominator of guy humor.  Again, if Kevin Smith had other intentions besides making a COMEDY and was, as you say advising a certain age demographic, he would have made, “Zack and Miri Update Their Resumes” or “Zack and Miri Apply for a Master’s Program Scholarship.”

Lisa also takes a stab at Kevin Smith’s film making aptitude, which has obviously been a handicap for him for the past almost two decades:

A Smith production is always noisy, shambling, and liberally smutty on the outside while conservatively gooey on the inside (and always, proudly, a visual eyesore, as if compositional coherence signifies selling out to the Man).

Noisy? Yes.  Shambling? Maybe. Liberally smutty on the outside while conservatively gooey on the inside?  Absolutely.  Once again: Kevin Smith film.  But she takes a stab at the man’s “compositional coherence” as if he dreads “selling out to the Man.”  I don’t think that’s it at all.  Kevin Smith’s “compositional coherence” is fantastic.  He has a model that works, and it has worked just fine since making his cult-classic Clerks and followup, Mallrats, with HUGE budget constraints.

Lisa Schwarzbaum, shut up.

If, for some reason, you read Lisa Schwarzbaum’s review and were swayed from seeing the movie, think again.  Zack and Miri, like all of Smith’s other films, works because it speaks to the viewers on a human level.  People don’t live grand, special effects-laden lives with “compositional coherence.”  People live lives that are often crude, sophomoric and awkward.  That is why I plan to see the next Kevin Smith movie, regardless of what Ms. Schwarzbaum says.

- David C. Garcia, film critic critic

I just finished up a new chapter of THE BOOK.  I was jamming to the Donnie Darko soundtrack, totally setting the mood for where I am in the story.

“Mad World” is an absolute tear-jerker of a song.  Beautiful, and very apt for the part of the book I am writing.  I implore you to push play on this video and listen to the song.

And my next post will have another snippet from the book.  Maybe.  If I feel like it.  You have to beg.  Listen to that song first.

I feel like a little kid.

If Guns n’ Roses’ website isn’t bullshitting us, then it is OFFICIAL.  Chinese Democracy is coming out November 23.  The new single, “Chinese Democracy” sounds fucking awesome.  My eardrums are popping massive boners.

Barack Obama on the cover of one of America’s favorite hip-hop magazines?  I had no idea he had an album coming out.  I cannot wait to see John McCain on the cover of Metal Edge.  These politicians are really scraping the barrel for votes.

By the way, I am still undecided.

A few of my coworkers and I were discussing horror movies today.  I decided to post a list of the horror awesomeness I currently own.  I think I’ll do something with this list eventually, maybe go through it and rate some of them based on a variety of merits.  Maybe not.  Don’t hassle me.

I elected to keep certain movies out of this list, mainly so I could have a true horror list.  However, I do consider certain movies like the Alien series (more horror than Sci-Fi) and The Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal series (equally horror as much as thriller) to, at times, qualify for this list.  I decided against putting them here just to make sure I didn’t get any backlash.

Have at:

An American Haunting
The Amityville Horror (remake)
Army of Darkness
Basket Case
Bubba Ho-tep
Cabin Fever
Creepshow
Dawn of the Dead (remake)
Dead Alive

Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Matt sent me to this caption contest link (here)

Here’s mine:

Forgetting to take his Aricept, Mr. McCain’s Alzheimer’s kicked in.

“Hey boy! Boy! What are you doing here? This place here is for whites only!”

Knowing full well Mr. McCain was raised prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, Sen. Obama just strolled past the senile old man as he did his best to impersonate a lynched slave.

What’s yours?

NOTE: This is a real photo.  It is not Photoshopped.  It was snapped during the last debate when McCain made a goofy face as he accidentally went the wrong way.  Here’s the Reuter’s original photo and text.