Andy Gapin

Last Friday, I took a trip down to Philly to see forgetters play their fourth show ever at the Barbary. Forgetters is the new band from Blake Schwartzenbach (Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil) and Kevin Malone (the original drummer of Against Me!). Blake used to front my favorite band of all time so when he starts up something new, it’s without a doubt going to be interesting to me. His last band, Thorns Of Life, didn’t last long at all. They broke up a few months ago, having never officially recorded anything. A couple of live bootlegs are all the remain of the band. Anyway, this was the first of Blake’s bands that I’ve seen live. I wasn’t old enough when Jawbreaker broke up to even appreciate good music, let alone go to the shows–okay, I was thirteen, if I was on top of my shit, I might have been there, but I wasn’t. And I didn’t actually start caring about Jets to Brazil until it was too late.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from forgetters. I had heard that they were playing some Thorns Of Life songs, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant in terms of what to expect. They came out and started with a Thorns Of Life song…but it sounded better than what I had heard from the bootlegs. They played two other Thorns Of Life songs throughout the set including a one that was heavily re-worked as their last song. The rest of the songs seemed to be all forgetters original. Think something a little more along the lines of Orange Rhyming Dictionary with some Hum influence.

I was a little surprised to find that I held the unpopular opinion among my friends of loving it. I think it is a very positive step from where Thorns Of Life was. Thorns Of Life was pretty good, but this is a lot more interesting to me.

Good stuff. Here are a few videos from a couple of the shows. They sound horrible, but I’m hoping someone made a decent bootleg that will turn up soon.

Last night was my second show in my new 9pm time slot on Wednesdays. As skeptical as I was at first about moving my show to a new time after being at 10pm for six years, I have to say, it’s going really well. I find that I have a little more energy to do it and I don’t start fading in the second half of the show the way I did at 10pm. And getting home earlier, leaving me with time to watch Glee before bed, is a pretty nice bonus.

I felt on again last night. Everything came together really well with some of the best segues from one song into another that I’ve ever put together. The only flaw in the show was playing a band called The Sexy Accident. I needed something with a poppy-ish indie-rock sound (almost older Weezerish) and it fit in perfectly, but the lyrics are pretty terrible and the name is even worse. I like the singer’s voice a lot though and musically, they sound alright, but I can’t get past the lyrics.

Source: 90.3 The Core

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of days. It’s not the first time, not by a long shot, but yesterday involved a seriously in-depth conversation about the topic, putting it firmly into my consciousness.

Let’s think about this, what exactly would a zombie vampire be? And we need to make the distinction between a zombie vampire and a vampire zombie. The former being first and foremost a vampire that became zombified and the latter being a zombie that got turned into a vampire. I’m going to say that while the second scenario would work out quite well for the zombie, this is rather unlikely.

It’s also important to note that the relationship between zombies and vampires must be a bit awkward. They have no direct reason to interact with each other. Neither is any good to the other. Zombies need the flesh of the living and vampires need the blood of the living. Since both are technically dead, a vampire is no good to a zombie and a zombie is no good to a vampire. However, since they both seek out the living as a food source, they are in competition. Once either of them get a hold of a living human, that’s about it. There is no sharing.

But this isn’t about zombies vs. vampires and their relationship with one another, this is about a hybrid.

Let’s say that a human were to get bit by a zombie and thus become infected. But let’s say that this human wasn’t killed right away and was living for a while still. Now at this point, he/she is still perfectly alive and therefore still a potential vampire target. If a vampire were to take a delicius little sip of this human’s blood and decide to turn the human, then the human would become a vampire that is still infected with the zombie virus. And the first vampire would have sucked infected blood. We could have two zombie vampires here!

Well, maybe not so fast. If a zombie is a re-animated corpse, that would require the vampire to die to become a zombie. This isn’t too likely, seeing as how a vampire is the living dead. So how would the vampire be affected by the zombie virus? Would it be infected at all? Would the vampire take on some of the zombie’s qualities? There are a lot of questions here.

What qualities could a zombie vampire have? One of a zombie’s biggest weaknesses is that its flesh is rotting and it therefore won’t be around forever before it simply falls apart. But it is pretty reasonable to say that a zombie vampire’s flesh would not rot at all. A vampire is not living and has no trouble with rotting flesh, there is no reason to believe that a zombie vampire would be any different. Now, we have a zombie that has no expiration date.

One of the zombie’s biggest weaknesses after the rotting is the fact that rigor mortis has set in. This is possibly the main reason why zombies are traditionally so slow. But in our case, with the zombie vampire, rigor mortis may not be an issue. There is no dying here and that means there is no rigor mortis. This zombie isn’t going to be a stiffy. Vampires are known for their incredible speed so now we may have a zombie that retains it’s full speed. Even in a worst case scenario, a zombie vampire would be faster than a human.

What if the vampire is of the bat-turning-into variety? Does the zombified version of this vampire retain this ability? If so, a flying zombie is second in scariness only to a shark that can walk on land.

What kind of brain power does a zombie vampire have? If there is no death process and no rotting, it is likely that a zombie vampire retains a fully functioning brain as opposed to just the brain-stem.

What does a zombie vampire need to survive? Suddenly, both blood and flesh are consumables. A living human is now both a meal and a beverage. Much less of the human is wasted. Now you’ve got a green zombie!

How is a zombie vampire killed or at least neutralized? Is destroying the brain or removing the head enough? Does the brain need to be destroyed with a silver bullet?

There are a lot of important questions here and not a lot of answers. Clearly, a lot more (scientific) research will need to be done. At this point, it seems as though a zombie vampire may either not even be possible at all or take on very few zombie traits.

Stay tuned for a followup post.

Take a look at the center of these two pictures. That’s a rainbow that was peering down through a hole in the clouds this morning. I was pulling into the work parking lot when I saw it so I could only snap a picture with my phone, but it was so beautiful. No rain or anything, just a hole in the clouds with a rainbow shining through.

These three are from Woot‘s random deal last week. The first and third ones are pretty awesome, but I’m not really sure how I feel about the second one.

Last night was my first show at my new 9pm slot on Wednesdays. For the last six years, I’ve been at 10pm, but alas it was time to make a move. It was a little hard to remember to say the right times while I was talking on the mic and I actually signed in at the wrong time at first, but other than that, this was one of my best shows in the past few months. I was really happy with everything about it and I think I picked up a few new listeners who were tuning in expecting to hear Now Airing Dirty Laundry with Miss Lisa, the show that had been at 9 for the past couple years.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Just a heads up that, starting tonight, The Playlist will now be airing at 9pm instead of 10! This will be the first time in six years that I’ll be broadcasting from a different time, but I look forward to the change. Maybe I’ll even be able to pick up some new listeners.

Listen live at 90.3 FM or www.thecore.fm!

Take Meet The Robinsons, The Matrix, Tim Burton’s entire filmography, and everything Steampunk and you get 9. It’s a visually awesome film, no doubt. It’s as beautiful and stunning as the trailers will have you believe. But the story is melded together from so many other ideas in other films that you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Twice. No, three times. No, more.

For as entertained as I was, I feel like I should have walked out of the theater with more. I’m not sure what exactly, but there’s something missing here. 9 is creative, yet at the same time, full of stolen ideas and this isn’t hidden at all. I felt myself going back and forth between loving it and saying to myself “hey…wait…”

Rating: B-

Last night ended up being a pretty decent show. I wasn’t really feeling it much beforehand and I got to the station late because I was watching Obama’s speech, but I pulled it together nicely. There’s been somewhat of a lack of bigger names on the Playlist lately, but I don’t think the show has suffered from it. I hope I’m not the only one that feels that way.

I think the highlight of last night was getting a call from an angry listener after saying that I thought Obama nailed his speech to Congress about healthcare. The caller did not agree at all. He even went so far as to suggest that maybe I just liked the sound of his voice. Oh well.

Source: 90.3 The Core

I don’t think I’ve met anyone that has ever said they don’t like Mike Judge. I know a few people that don’t get or like Idiocracy–I feel sorry for them–but everyone likes Office Space and most people in their mid to late twenties enjoyed Beavis And Butthead growing up. With all that in mind, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone that thinks Extract was bad. It’s not going to blow you away in any way, but it’s far from bad or boring. It’s not a great movie. It’s good movie.

Extract is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be. If you saw the trailer, you already know how the movie plays out. It’s nothing special and nothing you aren’t expecting. But that isn’t to say that it’s not an entertaining movie. Maybe it was because my expectations weren’t super high so I couldn’t be disappointed, but the only reason why I was waiting for it to end was because I had to pee.

To compare it to Judge’s other films, Extract is much more Office Space with a focus on banality, but not a notch or two down. Jason Bateman’s character is a rather likeable and easy to relate to guy, but I couldn’t decide if I really felt bad for him or not. I think I may have been rooting against him slightly. Casting-wise, Judge got it right on…even down to the generally easy-to-hate Ben Affleck who may have given the acting performance of his life in Extract. Okay, maybe that’s a bit overboard, but come on, even though he’s been in some good movies and hasn’t really ruined anything for me, he’s not that great of an actor. But he got the part exactly right for this film.

Overall, I’d say check it out if you’re looking for something to see, but if you’re not already dying to see it or desperate for something to do one night in the upcoming weeks, just wait for the DVD…and Netflix it.

Rating: B-