Andy Gapin

I was really feeling the music that I played last night. Lots of really good new stuff. I was surprised by the Chris Walla song that I played. I never liked Death Cab, they always bored me, but I liked the song I played by him. It had a little something to it that grabbed me. Nothing groundbreaking, but very listenable.

More like three weeks of the beard!

The beard got trimmed on Friday morning. I have my reasons, but it was sad.

So that turned out to be a huge disappointing failure.

I read this article about Cloverfield and all of the stuff that I missed out on leading up to the movie. It helps a lot.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. Whycome?

I should have listened to Patton Oswalt, but no, I got intrigued by his rant about this movie. After hearing his bit on it, I immediately added it to my Netflix queue. Yeah, smart idea!

This movie was down right awful. I mean it’s bad. It definitely is in the top three worst movies that I’ve ever actually sat through, with the other two being The 13th Child and I, Zombie. I’m not even kidding.

And no, it’s not “so bad, it’s good.” It’s just bad.

This movie was originally made in 1977, but the guy who made it couldn’t find anyone to release it so he forgot about it. It should have stayed that way, but no, some internet turds had to go and find this and pirate it. Eventually, the guy saw the internet attention and remembered that he made it and was somehow able to get it released on DVD.

Sigh.

It’s the kind of movie that you can talk through the entire time and not miss anything. In fact, that’s the only way that you’re going to actually get through it. You need a support group of witty friends to keep your brain active otherwise this will completely melt it.

None of the actors show any emotion at all. Even when the bed is eating them, they just kind of moan with blank looks on their faces. One chick got her legs all messed up, but managed to climb out and crawl across the room for about twenty minutes while just moaning. Never once screamed. Then another guy got his hands completely eaten down to the bone, but had pretty much no reaction. No screaming. Just a blank look on his face. Even as they snapped off the brittle bones that used to form his hands.

And about the eating…. I was expecting a bed that literally just chomped down on people. No, we don’t get that. We get a bed that dissolves people through the sheets. It doesn’t move at all, yet it can somehow control the house it’s in and cause people to have nightmares while they’re sleeping. Surprisingly, this is actually explained, but I think I would have been better off without the explanation.

The noises that the bed makes? Ridiculous.

The fact that there is hardly any dialog and most of the voice overs are just people’s thoughts? Annoying.

The fact that there’s pretty much no music to go in the background? Snoozetown, USA.

The boobs? Not even four sets of them were enough to make this worth it.

God, I can’t even get into just how stupid this movie is. I would ask for the hour and twenty minutes of my life back, but I think that seeing this was a rite of passage. Like it was necessary for me to see that things this bad really do exist. However, please take my word on this and do not try to actually watch it. If you do, make sure that you have a mop handy to clean up your brains after they melt out through your ears.

Here’s a review of this movie from another blog.

Last night’s show was pretty good. New music has finally started pouring into the station again after the winter slowdown/stop. There was tons for me to check out and since I was in San Francisco last week, there was two weeks worth. Going through reviews in the database beforehand, I found about forty albums that looked like they were worth checking out.

So I got to play a lot of REALLY new music, but the downside was that more than ever, I was playing songs that I had never heard before. I usually will play albums I haven’t heard yet, but there are normally like only five songs a week or so that are like that. Last night, it was the majority. I get a little scared when that happens because you don’t really know what you’re getting, but I think for the most part it worked out very well. I have a ton of music to check out and get familiar with before next week’s show. Yay!

Yesterday at about 4:30pm, it seemed like the entire internet got taken over by Heath Ledger’s death. It was only an hour after he was found dead, yet almost every site had something about it. The message board that I post on everyday became pretty consumed by it. There were about a dozen threads. Some were serious discussions about it. Some were discussions about the upcoming Batman movie, Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger plays the Joker. And then there were the parodies and jokes. CNN.com and MSNBC.com had huge banners at the top of their home pages with the headline.

Honestly, Heath Ledger dying is the most important news from yesterday?!? Nothing else happened? Nothing that might actually affect more than a few people? Anytime someone dies–well, unless they’re a douche–it’s sad and I feel for his family and friends, especially his two year old daughter, but really, he’s just a dude. His death means nothing more or less than anyone else’s death. Being famous shouldn’t mean that everything else stops when you die.

Unfortunately, in America, this is the news that sells. Americans care much more about celebrities’ lives than things that actually matter and affect them and other people around the world. We, as a population, would much rather be entertained than know what’s going on.

Sigh.

I can’t believe it’s taken me four days to finally get a chance to blog about this, but after having it raved about relentlessly by a few of my friends, I went to see Cloverfield on Saturday night.

I went in with pretty high hopes based on what my friends were saying, but at the same time I knew that Blair Witch (and the movie that it completely ripped off, The Last Broadcast) and Godzilla had both been done before so I was a bit apprehensive about what this movie could offer that hasn’t been done.

Walking out, I felt both very satisfied, but also slightly underwhelmed. For the most part, I loved the movie. I thought that it was very well done and the point of view and style that was used really helped add to the experience. However, at the same time, the whole making a film that is supposed to be the playback of a camcorder that was found does have some serious drawbacks. Especially for a movie like this. Granted, all of these are to be expected and I knew this going in, it’s still a bit annoying. The camera was hardly ever pointing where I wanted it to be or where it seemed that a real person in that situation would be pointing it. It also seemed to be on at unnatural times a lot. While the shaking did add to the affect of the movie a lot, there were times where it was quite annoying. Then there are also the silly things like how the hell did the battery last that long? The movie was less than an hour and a half long, so it’s very plausible that the battery would last the whole time, until you factor in the fact that they had turned the light on to see in the subway tunnel and the battery probably wasn’t fully charged when the night started.

For the most part, I kind of liked the characters with the exception of Marlena. She just annoyed me in most every way. I was actually glad to watch her explode. Rob’s character seemed to be pretty realistic and Hud reminded me of someone I know who just always has something to say, but never actually knows what he should be saying. Just kind of runs his mouth a lot while saying silly things, yet still a totally good dude in every way.

While it was obviously intended and this was not the type of movie to answer all questions, there is a lot that I want to know! Was it in fact a sea monster? How was Beth able to RUN down the street after having piece of rebar go through her chest? What exactly made Marlena explode? Where the hell was everyone? Sure everyone fled through the tunnels and the bridges, but you have to figure that Manhattan still has a few million people and getting them off the island would have taken a long time during such a crisis and no one knowing what was going on. Why were there not more dead, crushed bodies throughout the city? How the hell did the three of them and the camera survive the helicopter crash, but neither of the pilots did? How were the police so organized in the beginning of the attack? How was the power still on in the subway tunnels and how did all of the people get out of the subway trains? Some of them must have gotten stuck in the middle of tunnels. Did the “hammer down” kill the monster? Was there only one monster or were the more in other cities? The questions go on and on…

But like I mentioned, it wasn’t the type of movie that is supposed to answer all of the questions. You were meant to be left hanging like that. In the end, I would definitely recommend the movie and I want to see it again. I’d say it gets an A-.

Edit: I just read this interview with Matt Reeves. It’s pretty good and provides some decent insight into some of my questions.

Edit 2: Apparently, if I had stayed until the end of the credits, I would have heard Rob say “it’s still alive.” That answers that!

Last night, we went over to this podcaster meet and greet thing, but it was pretty crowded so we didn’t stay very long. Though, while we were there I saw ex-CNET star Veronica Belmont who happens to be my favorite internet celebrity (iCeleb?). I’m sure she has a Google alert set up for herself so that’s going to make me feel like a pretty big weirdo for posting this, but meh. I got a picture with her, but it turned out a little blurry. She was super nice even though I felt like a total creep going up to her.

After that we went over to the Mission area and grabbed food at this crepes place that had James Bond music playing the whole time. I definitely caught the main James Bond theme as well as the songs from Moonraker and the Living Daylights. There were a few more that sounded familiar and James Bondy, but it was too loud for me to make out which movies they were from. The bathroom there was kind of crazy too. They had a foreign language training CD playing and the design was this interesting mermaid thing.

That pretty much concludes the trip. I’ll be hopping on a plane back to Jersey soon.

I just saw a very clearly homeless man standing on the street corner with a sign that said “my wife was kidnapped and I’m 15 cents short for ransom.” Honestly, does he really expect that anyone is going to believe that? And there’s no way that I’m going to give my change–yes, it’s only change–to someone who is clearly lying. Just be up front about it, “I’m homeless and I’m hungry. I would really appreciate some change so I can go eat, but I’ll probably just spend it on booze instead.” That might actually get what I’ve got in my pocket.

I also have been amazed that there are some street corners here in San Francisco where you can legally do a diagonal cross. The light turns red in all directions and the walk signs light up for all directions. The cops even tell you to do it. This boggled my mind!

Yesterday, I went to a few of the Macworld conference sessions which were mostly pointless. They were pretty basic and in one of the sessions, the guy pretty much just said “search Google” for an hour and fifteen minutes. I don’t think I could have figured that out on my own!

Today’s sessions were slightly better. I snuck into some of the IT oriented ones which were a little less of “you’re probably a retard.” There was actually some useful information to be taken from them.

Last night, we went to Cirque Du Soleil (it was the KOOZA one). I had never been before, but the others I was with had been. I thought it was amazing. Some of the stuff was super mind blowing. I never thought that I’d see a girl put her butt on the back of her head before, but it happened! There were also some crazy acrobatics, two guys riding bikes on a tight rope with a pole between then and then a guy balancing on a chair on top of the pole, a guy riding a unicycle with a girl standing on his head and while throwing her around. Some crazy juggling too. I could go on and on about it, but I won’t. I didn’t quite get exactly what the story was supposed to be during the show, but I think it’s something about a boy in a field daydreaming in a fantasy world and trying to find his place it all of it.

Today, for lunch, I went to a Chinese food place and found out that the whole “and then…?” joke from Dude, Where’s My Car? wasn’t just some funny thing that they came up with, but a real thing at Chinese places out here. I was sitting there eating my food and the entire time, I just hear a Chinese woman saying “and then?” over and over. It was kind of funny actually.

I only have a handful of pictures to post for this update. Most of the good stuff on the exhibit floor I had already gotten pictures of and during the actual Cirque du Soleil show, you can’t take pictures. It’s kind of reasonable that you can’t though. With some of the stuff that they do, I wouldn’t want to be the one to distract them and cause someone to fall.

Tonight, I think we’re going over to Mission which is where all the action is in the city or so we’re being told. We’ll find out!

Disclaimer: I might not be sober.

Tonight, we went to a reception for Apple sales people which was kind of uneventful. There was free food and drinks so that was nice. I had a decent amount of beers to start off the night.

After that, we went searching for an afterparty, but that was a bit…well, not as we intended. We walked around for a few blocks not knowing where anything was and not finding anything. Then as we were walking by one place and talking about it, this random girl–never caught her name–started talking to us. We said we were looking for a place to go and she took us to this bar that she was on her way to. It ended up being a nice, quaint little bar.

On the way to the bar, she kept talking and it was really weirding us out. She seemed like she was desperate to make any friends she could even thought she lives here and we are from out of town. She was downright crazy and I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but it was the kind of interaction where I almost immediately wanted to just be like “hey, neither of us are single and we’re not going to take our pants off anywhere around you. Just wanted to put that out there.”

The bar itself was alright. It was nice and quiet, but not what we were looking for. It was the kind of thing that I would go to back home, but not when I’m out on the other side of the country. The best part was when I was sitting there and all of a sudden The Gaslight Anthem came on. I was super stoked that they were getting played out here. I asked the bartender who was controlling the music and he said it was this dude’s iPod. I talked to him for a little bit later and he was super cool, but a bit pissed at us because we kind of pawned crazy girl off on him and she was talking to him until she left. He felt about the same way that we did about her.

After the entire Gaslight Anthem full length, the Hold Steady came on which is always awesome. The music really made me feel good about the bar, but I got a text from my company’s Apple rep asking if we were going to the afterparty that one of our distributors was throwing.

We went over to the party being pretty skeptical about actually getting in, but we had no problems when we mentioned the name that we were told to say. We got in and it was like a club, but with old people dancing. Not old like OLD, but old like in their forties. It was a bit weird, but it was open bar so that was cool.

We chilled there for a bit before leaving to come back to the hotel.