| If you happened to love either photoshop, rotoscoping, mashups, or THE THUNDERCATS you will probably love this.
| comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| Okay. So, now, there's a $900 room available. It's super sunny, nice hardwood floors, good view of Prospect Park. Includes everything.
1 room in a 3BR, Prospect-Lefferts neighborhood, Brooklyn, NYC. 2 - 5 minutes to the Q and the B at an express and a local stop. Across the street from the park (close to the drummer's grove, if you know the park). Located on Ocean Ave, between Lincoln and Parkside Ave.
We're looking for somebody to start as soon as possible. The room is something of a sublet, so the rental period will last until late spring, but there's some negotiability there.
We're looking for a person who's respectful of space, basically. Don't wyle the eff out, don't leave a disgusting mess, and don't be too stinky. That's really all we ask for. In return, we've got a sweet furnished room, some closet space, kitchen, bathroom, living room, access to a bike if you want, 2 fridges, and just a generally sweet spot for you.
It would be swell living with you.
<3
| | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| Ack! Some housemates of mine just bailed, leaving me in a bit of a pickle. If you are awesome, and want to live in Brooklyn, literally across the street from Prospect Park, for like $840 (all included, even internet), then GET AT YA BOY REV1!
No, seriously. I mean it.
-Che | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| And it's the fire THIS time, if you know what I'm saying.
Son of Nun's second full length album brings all the heat, lyrical prowess, and political fire you might expect from one of the underground's hardest working emcee organizers out there. With DJ Mentos on production, Son travels through contemporary politics, historical context, hip hop and media, and just straight crowd rocking. From the haunting "New Ab" (featuring yours truly) to the triumphant anthem "The Reason", the album comes correct.
http://sonofnun.net/
Son is more than an emcee, though. You can find him working with veterans, so-called immigrants, baltimore city schools, on the air with Chuck D, and on the grind. Everybody, I urge you to buy his album. Support a true emcee and scholar, and put something truly revolutionary on your playlist.
http://sonofnun.net/
Also, this sunday, catch Son at the Rotunda in Philly, rocking along-side an emcee I also give ups to, Hassan Salaam, who opened his first album with three of the hardest tracks I'd ever heard. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| http://news.therecord.com/article/354044
This kid is awesome.
Short of any accidental bio-force projects going awry, this is really awesome.
It does, however, beg the question: what the fuck are professional scientists doing all day, anyway?
SCIENTIST GOT PWND BY A NUB, LOLZ | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Let me get this out of the way:
No, I'm not a big fan of the original cartoon. No, I'm not a fan of any of the reboots of the cartoon. No, I'm not a Wachowski fanboy. Yes, I love the Speed Racer movie. And no, I can't figure out why it's getting horrible reviews across the board.
Speed Racer (2008) is a movie for kids by the guys who brought us The Matrix (1999). Much like their explosion into movie biz relevance (after the minor impact of 1996's Bound), Speed Racer is a high-octane (or high Iodine Fuel Cell?) special effects bonanza. I would also argue that it contains similar themes, though, necessarily simplified, but more on that later. The Wachowski Brothers (Larry and Andy) dug deep in the crates and unearthed the 1960s cartoon Speed Racer, known in its country of origin (Japan) as Mahha GoGoGo, and for reasons only they are privy to, decided to turn a lame-ass cartoon into the new hotness. Make no mistake, the 1960s Speed Racer lacked the drama of other early anime import Star Blazers (Space Battleship/Cruiser Yamato), the scope of Robotech (the repackaged and retooled Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, along with Mospeda and Southern Cross), the 50s charm of Astroboy or Gigantor (Tetsujin 28). Speed Racer as a cartoon was pretty much on par with Scooby-Doo, without the guest appearances. It enjoyed several nostalgic revivals, including one in the early 90s (Fresh Prince/Will Smith was seen wearing a "retro before the term was coined" Speed Racer shirt in the video for Summertime) and the mid/late 90s (DJ Chilly Che was seen wearing a Speed Racer shirt in the video for We Can Rock Y'all, and Volkswagon featured Speed in a Jetta ad that I thought was rad). But even in the height of his comeback, nobody was fooled into actually thinking the show was particularly watchable.
Which brings us to 2008. The Wachowskis have brought us a gorgeous if not insane and candy-colored rendition of Speed Racer's world, one which recalls some of the 60s stylings of the source material while infusing it with a healthy dose of the Playstation's WipeOut XL. In addition to kitchy wallpaper, we have ubiquitous loglo (cities and racetracks are plastered in neon signs and product placements for largely fictional, or obscure products and companies, although Motorola enjoys a big fat moment on screen), rocket cars, hot pink helicopters, and digital kaleidescope of colors and patterns to bring us to edge of brain meltdown. Few live-action movies have created as stunning a landscape, nor integrated real human actors into a virtual world as entertainingly, though I should mention that Sin City, 300, The Fifth Element, and Dick Tracy all get shouts out for their sense of art direction and production design. Sin City, however, gets a big middle finger for coming across like a 14-year old boy's wetdream fantasy of overt and covert patriarchal reinforcement.
Speed Racer is, as the Wachowskis set out to create, a kids movie. As such, the story is fairly simple and sweet. Without giving away anything that isn't in the first couple of trailers, I can say that the story finds a tight-knit family (the Racer family) in conflict with Big Business and Corporate Sponsors. This is a film about the indies versus the major players. There are moments when this is explicit in the dialog, but its one of the themes from start to finish. This little subversion, contained in a major studio motion picture, is par for the Wachowskis' course, given the track record of The Matrix (and its loser sequels), and V for Vendetta (which they served as Producers on, handing directorial reigns to colleague, James McTeigue). In addition to its anti-corporate tinkering with the heart of something message, it's about family, which shouldn't be a surprise to a kids-film-savvy audience. But perhaps more surprising are some of the metaphoric undertones in the film. It could be said that I'm giving the Wachowskis too much credit, but after carefully considering their other films, I'm quite sure that there are some spiritual messages in Speed Racer, perhaps summed up by Rex Racer's line, early in the film, "Stop steering, and start driving." It sounds like some pseudo-mystic faux-deep mumbo jumbo when taken out of context. It might also sound like writers frantically trying to make driving cars seem more noble than just, well, driving cars. But when taken as part of the whole of the film, one understands this line as the analog of Bruce Lee's famous "Don't think, feel," or perhaps Obi-Wan Kenobi's disembodied voice echoing "Use the Force, Luke." Given the path Speed Racer goes on, and his eventual destination, I would suggest that driving and being driven and listening are not entirely superficial concepts in the context of this film.
It's not the best film I've ever seen, to be sure. The characters, though likable, tend to be at the service of the plot, rather than the other way around. There are a young kid and his monkey companion, which are surprisingly far less annoying than you might expect. This is definitely the best monkey-related kids film I've ever seen, which of course is not saying much of anything, if you've ever had the (mis)fortune of seeing MVP: Most Valuable Primate. But, oddly, I found that Spritle and Chim-Chim just added to the overall charm of the whole. Their obsession with Candy, and the momentary sugar high sequence felt completely appropriate in a film which most certainly has tasted the rainbow. In any other context, I would have been embarrassed to even see such a thing.
But what about the Speed Racing? Look. If you've ever played a game in the WipeOut franchise, then you know what the racing is about. It's fast as hell, the tracks are insane, curvy, loopy, filled with obstacles, and the music is pulse-pounding. That's what's going on in Speed Racer. And the camera does things that leave me believing that the entire film must have been storyboarded inside the Holodeck on the USS Enterprise. I have never, outside of animation, particularly Macross-related animation, seen a camera move through space as unconcerned with gravity and acceleration as it does in Speed Racer. It takes a fraction of a second for the camera to truck between a close-up of Racer X and a close up of Speed, several cars apart, winding around icy hills, driving at something short of Ludicrous Speed. If the camera needs to wrap underneath a track and pull a 180 to get from Speed's eye, to his skidding tire two seconds later, it will. If the martial arts choreography impressed you in The Matrix (which it, admit it, it did. It impressed me, and I'd been watching wire-fu movies for at least a decade before that bad boy came out), then the camera choreography here will have you bowing and calling the DP and the FX team Sifu.
At 135 minutes, the film may seem long for a children's movie. But I applaud the Wachowskis for taking their time to accomplish what they set out to accomplish. I've read at least one review that criticizes the film for being over two hours, suggesting that no child could endure such a venture. Simply because children's films have been short in recent history does not mean that they have to be. Children sat through the original Star Wars trilogy (Star Wars ran at 121 minutes, Empire at 125 minutes, and Jedi -- the most kid friendly -- at 134 minutes), the Indiana Jones trilogy (with all films landing right around the 120 minutes mark), the original Superman (which is a whopping 143 mintues, that, upon rewatching, seems like 2 million minutes), and so much more. Plus, The Wizard of Oz, which I believe is actually a short movie, when shown on TV every stupid year, is like a 4 hour event. It takes all night. God I hate that movie. But, as a kid, I loved Superman, I loved Star Wars. Is my attention span shorter or longer than an 8-year old today? Is it shorter or longer than another 31-year old today? I don't know the answer to those questions, but I do know that while you may need to take a pee-break if you didn't go before you step into the theater, the film is by no means too long. I would have felt short changed if they had cut a major race, a corporate double-deal, or an enchanting flashback to Speed's childhood (some of my favorite material).
Basically, what I'm trying to say, is that this movie is awesome. Literally. When I left the theater (after the first viewing, fairly close to the screen) my eyes were streaming with water. Was I crying? The last ten to fifteen minutes of the film are so intense, it might melt your face if you're not taking your vitamins. Seriously. It may be possible that the Wachowskis have hacked our brains and implanted some sort of patterned code into the film that will cause a global awakening, or, it may just be that the film was totally blowing my mind. It's not Fight Club and it's not Citizen Kane. It's not Chinatown or Annie Hall or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's not There Will Be Blood, for crying out loud. But it's awesome. If you enjoy seeing moving pictures -- I mean, images that move in front of your eyes, not just movies -- then you should probably see this movie, because there is nothing else like it. That's legal, at least. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Here's something I just found on youtube (I wasn't looking for it) that I feel adds to my post:
And this is from one of my FAVORITE Michael Bay films. Eesh. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| There's an artform called Machina. It's when people use game engines and models from games to make their own movies. It's interesting, because you don't need the super expensive software to do CGI from scratch, just a game and a little hacking knowhow (and most games these days are fairly open thanks to the popularity of mods). The rest is just your eye and sense of timing.
I wish I knew more about this stuff before I embarked on my video project, as I probably could have saved myself a lot of time and issues using a game engine to do my music video, instead of bringing it all into 3D Studio Max and doing it from scratch. Indeed, some of my models are straight from games. On the plus side, I've learned a shit-ton about 3D graphics, and even max-script, the language used in 3D Studio Max.
Meanwhile, here is a video that some guy made. Mainly himself. Using characters from two game franchises, Final Fantasy and Dead Or Alive. The choreography and cinematography is INCREDIBLE. It's frankly the best action sequence I've seen in... I don't know how long. Without even having character or story to drive the action, it still manages to be intensely awesome. I think I may have to hire this guy for SOMETHING.
EDIT: I've been told this ISN'T machina. But rather, something somebody did in an animation package using models pulled from game engines. This makes most of the politics of this post obsolete, but, I still think machina offers an interesting alternative to filmmakers without a budget, actors, sets, cameras, etc. Also, I'm not sure whether the dude who made this used animation sets associated with those models, associated with other models, in available motion-capture data, or keyframed the stuff himself. Regardless, it's awesome, and the physics are quite impressive as well. Working on a CGI video myself, I'm well aware that the time it takes to blow some cloth in the wind is actually nothing to sneeze at. Nothing at which to sneeze. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So, years ago, my DJ and I got into a heated email battled where I said something crazy about how hip hop wasn't even black music anymore, because while black people were making it, nobody was hearing anything that white people didn't let out of the gate. Ultimately, we let it drop because we were in very different places in our thinking. A while ago, I found his last email, and decided to respond. As I wrote the thing, I realized I was sort of just picking a fight and trying to get the last word in, even if my word was NICE LIKE RICE. So, I let it drop, again.
Well, now I realized, I can just post it on LJ! That way, everybody in the world can read it. But most importantly, I'll have a record of whatever crazy shit I was thinking when I wrote this. So that, a year, two years down the line, I can say, "whoa, I was such a heel." Because if I ever read that stuff between the Lawyer and the Emcee, I'm sure that's what I'll think.
BEGIN LETTER NOW!OK, last email on this, because it's taking way too much of my time, and it just puts me in a bad mood.
*
Issue 1:*
Here's my problem with your whole racial politics thing. It just breaks down on a "real world" level. So you assert that your race indicates things about your culture, your upbringing, your experiences, and what you've been told all your life. So basically, you can tell a lot about a person just from his or her skin. You can basically judge a book by it's cover. That's what I hear you saying. So, take you for example...
This is not quite what I've said. ( Read more... ) | | comments: 14 comments or Leave a comment |
| RACISM! Go ahead, read this article about how governments are trying to crack down on baggy pants. Seriously.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-14-Baggy_N.htm?csp=34
Okay. I have to say something, since I've mentioned dress codes a few times recently.
Here's what I have to say: HOLY SHIT.
I'm going to say this once: Baggy pants do not cause bad grades, poor grammar, or criminal tendencies. Correlations between any of these conditions are circumstantial. Let's see, are baggy pants an urban trend? Do they stem from hip hop? Is hip hop a person of color originated subculture? Yes to all of those. So, what else do we know occurs in urban, hip hop communities. Oh, well, we happen to know that the educational institutions systematically fail children who are in this environment. From crappy schools with poor materials, burned out or inexperienced teachers, curricula which are highly irrelevant or fail to engage the students, to administrators and councilors who are either ignorant of or incapable of addressing the needs of students from a different background, security personnel blinded by ingrained and institutionalized stereotypes, and initiatives that focus on testing and memorization rather than legitimate education. This is of course in addition to extracurricular conditions which are vastly different than those of these students' non-hip hop peers.
The article actually discusses the origin of the baggy pants trend (or at least one of the accepted origins) as a trend started in prison. If prison is a universal enough or common enough experience in a community to influence the clothing of the non-imprisoned members of a community, then clearly there are already some socio-political issues at work here. WHY is prison such a commonplace experience?
Once again, scapegoating rears its ugly head. The aging black bourgeoisie is in a panic because it has lost touch with the younger black generations. The white power structure is constantly afraid of black folk that do not conform to white societal norms, and is constantly trying to protect their own youth from the attractive counter-cultural memes of black culture (to little or no avail, see: Jazz, Rock and Roll, Hip Hop). Finally, there are plenty of short-sighted do-gooders who are genuinely concerned by the performance of black youth in our schools (whether this is motivated by a naive and outmoded vision of integration as homogeneity or fear of difference is irrelevant) and society, and are looking for anything upon which blame can be easily heaped. It's far less uncomfortable to fight the symptom than the cause.
I would be remiss to suggest that the only reason black youth are "falling behind" in amerikkkan is because of crappy schools. Yet, one of the other factors is difficult to discuss. The fear is, by even speaking this, it because legitimated in the eyes of cultural critics, and becomes yet another easy scapegoat. However, the fact of the matter is, 50 Cent, Nelly, and T.I. are crappy role-models. It has nothing to do with the clothes they wear, but rather the ideas they express and are allowed to express. Let me be clear, every knuckle-headed idea these dummies present is greenlit, okayed, recorded, packaged and broadcast by a company who, by distributing and profiting off of it, tacitly approves, regardless of any legal disclaimers. So the unholy union between hip hop's lowest common denominator and capitalism's profit first mentality presents us with poor role-models and spokespersons peddling instant gratification and success through thuggery in an environment which is hopeless enough to grab at such magic beans. And the kicker is, something is sick and wrong in white amerikkka, too, because their youth are equally entranced by the pied piper of Sony/EMI/BMG/50 Cent/Jay-Z.
Is it possible that our youth, though inexperienced and increasingly ignorant, are drawn, instinctively to a message that tosses aside the rules and regulations of the system? Is there still some sort of codified language of resistance buried beneath the bravado? Do children know that they are about to sell their soul for a place in the adult world, and instinctively seek a way out, a revolution of sorts? It's plausible, highly, in fact, yet, I would also argue that our commercial emcees are selling a false bill of goods. They are selling bucking the system (in a way that the system approves of enough to go ahead and market) without thought. They are selling freedom without responsibility. They are selling choice without consequence. And THAT is a physical impossibility. The rebellion they are selling is immature and short-sighted. And thus, not in the least revolutionary. That's why they sell it.
With little promise of truly thriving, and with mainstream success defined so narrowly that even a child recognizes that it is suffocating and restrictive, it is no wonder that fairy tales of being the most spoiled child in the world -- the millionaire thug -- appeal to the youth. The alternative is: slave away for a meager living, always battling debt and fatigue, or, in rare cases, slave away for a cushy and plush living, always battling fatigue and burn-out. Neither option truly allows one to be oneself. Neither allows one to fully awaken to one's potential. Mainstream success is not only narrowly defined, but it is quite often out of reach, either because the youth sense the idiocy of jumping through hoops to be given carrots, or because the hoops course is so riddled with booby-traps that it isn't worth it.
And politicians and so-called community leaders are trying to boil all of these complex issues down into baggy pants.
Assuming that there WAS a direct link between the CHOICE to wear baggy pants and the societal ills the legislators hope to eradicate, one would suspect the more effect strategy would be one in which youth no longer make the CHOICE to wear baggy pants. One in which the youth identify with non-baggy-pants-wearing individuals (who, almost by definition must use excellent grammar, have remarkable grades, and live pure lives on the up and up). But then, that's too root-cause-y again. Just get rid of the pants, they'll say.
All of their thinking, about values and socially acceptable modes of speech and dress is missing one crucial point. Within the community in which the youth in question identify, baggy pants ARE socially acceptable. They are only unacceptable to people outside of their community. This is an example of one community trying to impose its (quite arbitrary in this case) values on another community, or perhaps, more accurately, trying to destroy the artifacts of a subculture, and thus assimilate these individuals into their way of life. It's like the missionaries trying to convert indigenous populations to christianity or catholocism; if you can get the OTHER to practice YOUR rituals and believe your beliefs, then you have COLONIZED them.
Do people need discipline? Self-discipline? Yes. Absolutely. Without self-discipline, one cannot actually be responsible, and thus one cannot be free. If one is not free, none can be free. Do people need arbitrary discipline to wear their pants in a certain way? I don't think so. I wore my pants baggy and did well in high school. I wore my pants baggy and became vice president of a film production company -- a position that required quite a bit of discipline and focus. This proves that pants are not the proximate cause of poor performance in school or the workplace. It also proves that we can teach ourselves and our families discipline without dictating how pants are worn. (I should also mention that discipline is not the same as blindly following outside authority.) In fact, kung-fu pants tend to be somewhat baggy, yet martial artists are widely considered paragons of discipline.
There are plenty of ways to instill discipline that don't involve dictating what they wear. And if one insists on convincing people that they ought not wear this or that, one could at least come up with a convincing argument as to why one code of dress is somehow worse than another. For instance, detractors of the baggy pant have said it is "indecent" (which sounds quite a bit like an arbitrary judgment based on their particular code of decency, which I may or may not share), I could just as easily say that tight pants are indecent (in fact, I believe they have said this as well, but in reference to women). We'd arrive at a stale-mate -- unless of course I was the subculture, the smaller culture, the counter-culture, and we lived in a system of majority rule, in which case, the guy with the most teammates always wins the argument, no matter what. However, I could make an argument that wearing non-organic cotton is actually detrimental to the environment and dangerous to human health. This is less of a judgment and more of a fact. I could also cite the figures of how many people die harvesting pesticide-rich cotton, and the deplorable conditions in which these people work. The death figures are recorded numbers of deaths wherein the proximate cause has been determined, medically, to be poison pesticides. The judgment about the working conditions are in fact social constructs, but they are the same social constructs that legislators agree upon for our own country, and it would betray a certain lack of respect for ALL human life if they accepted these conditions elsewhere. The display and purchase of non-organic cotton pants is "indecent" because it supports continued human rights abuses and ecological disasters. The display of baggy pants is "indecent" because it's "not nice, not decent. If you ask six of these kids, 'What are your grades?' four will tell you they're making C's, D's and F's. I see how senior citizens respond to these kids. They're afraid." Hmm, I believe one has a stronger argument for banning non-organic cotton pants, than baggy pants.
So, in closing. FUCK THIS SHIT, DUDES. What the fuck is going on? I keep getting turned away at the door of various places for wearing pants somebody else doesn't like. Those are private organizations, and the owners are able to hide behind that distinction to mask their prejudice. We're talking about public places, now. Why do we put up with this shit? This is cultural profiling, this is telling people which subcultures are acceptable and which ones are not. This ends with Jews in ovens, Blacks in chains, Indians wiped out or stuck in little shitty reservations. This ends in a brave new world... one which looks surprisingly like the scary old world. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'll make this quick.
I rap. I've been doing it for a while. My influences are diverse. Public Enemy, Ice Cube, KRS, Eric B and Rakim, The Roots, Mos Def, dead prez. Films, animations, books, Malcolm X, El Che.
Somehow, this all lead to me being interviewed by Chuck D on his show for Air America. Check it out this sunday, between 11pm and midnight. Either online or on whatever local station carries the station. The show is called On The Real.
Honestly, it's a really huge honor to be acknowledged by one of my heroes. I don't feel like a kid who has been praised by a parent, though. It felt like one man who I really look up to respecting me as an equal. That's cool.
And I just moved to New York like three or four weeks ago.
Things are going pretty well. But... if anybody needs any video post work, lemme know, because I could use some loot. Oh, and if you wanna buy my albums that for some reason you haven't bought yet, they're still on sale. www.rev1.net and www.cypherdissident.com. Cuz, yeah, I could use a little loot.
Love y'all! | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
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