You’re Standing On My Neck

Posted by mariamargarita on December 21, 2008

I’ve had the theme song to Top Chef in my head for approximately 1,000 hours. I blame this on my job, which forces me to watch each episode of the show mutliple times, and on myself for being in love with Padma Lashkmi and Gail Simmons.

I also look like this when eating ribs.

So, here is a list of other opening songs I like. Let’s start with Top Chef and get that monster out of the way. The best way to title this song is: WE’RE GOING TO COOK THE SHIT OUT OF THESE CORNISH GAME HENS, BRO!

The Office has an excellent theme song. I also like how they’ve never changed frizzy haired Pam to the new learned how to use hair product Pam. NBC hates us and doesn’t want us to have the opening credits, so instead here is a talented young lady playing the song on the piano:

Daria has an opening theme song that yells out: it’s 1997, people. And pissed off teenage girls will never get this kind of representation on television again.

Veronica Mars was another show that did a smart thing by using an actual song instead of making up a fake song. In this case, the Dandy Warhols “We Used To Be Friends”. Season 3′s opener featured a slower version of the song. Some very resourceful teenagers created the following amazing video, a fake opener for Gossip Girl (where Veronica Mars’ Kristen Bell lends her vocal talents as narrator) using the Veronica Mars theme song. It’s actually really clever:

To continue with the trend of forgotten WB shows, the theme song to Popular was always so confusing to me, especially since the show is just high camp and nothing more. If you don’t know, Popular created one of the finest characters in Gay Pop Culture (the only pop culture that matters): Mary Cherry. And the song is a really strange strung together studio songwriter ditty about having to choose between looks or character. Oookay.

To say goodbye, we’ll end with we started with beautiful brunette brilliant Gail Simmons. Til next time.

gailsimmons

The virile wind pursues her with his breathing and burning sword.

Posted by Marco Sparks on December 21, 2008

Last night I had a dream that I was in a poker game with Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso, seriously. Picasso looked like Anthony Hopkins though, which makes sense, because that image of him stands out in my head more than actual pictures of Picasso. But I won’t imagine that it’s so shocking to say that I woke up slightly confused (what else is new?), and curious what the connection is there… I mean, I’m pretty damn familiar with the works of Dali and Hemingway, and so so on Picasso, but why those three? And then I remembered that Lollipop had mentioned Lorca to me last night, telling me that he was her favorite poet (after Brautigan, I presume). Lorca was somebody I certainly knew the name of, but the image in my head of him came to me pretty much the same way that Hopkins as Picasso did…

But that was last night and this is today, and on this lazy Sunday afternoon in which the sun was out for a while and is now hidden again and the wind is getting furiously cold, I’ve decided that we’re all going to enjoy one of the finer works by Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca:

The Gypsy And The Wind

by Federico García Lorca

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Spanish civil war memorials.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot, 1968.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso, 1937.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

Personally, I’d never give William S. Burroughs a sword. But that’s just me.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Pablo Picasso and Brigitte Bardot in his studio, 1958. Picasso refused to paint Bardot.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonitions Of Civil War) by Salvador Dali, 1936.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Spanish Leftists shoot at a statue of Jesus.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

Federico Borrell and Loyalist comrades at Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936, as taken by Robert Capa.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment Of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936, also by Capa, depicting the last moments of Federico Borrell.

Brand New “Guernica” (mp3)

The Modern Lovers “Pablo Picasso” (mp3)

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’re from the internet.”

Posted by Marco Sparks on December 20, 2008

Happy Yalda! Ah, let me tell you, Yalda aside, a Saturday night with nothing but the internetz to comfort you can be a cold, dark place. But, just like a good majority of the staff here at Counterforce, it’s totally doable.

See what I mean? How fucking awesome is that?

How to tell if your cat is trying to kill you.

I thought Obama would get me laid.

Bush shoe-tossing game sells for $7,800 on Ebay in just four days.

I read a short story today.

“Hey! You’re hot and I feel great. Let’s get married.”

Speaking of which, I found this clip randomly here on the internetz, but I think I love this girl:

Ninja robber.

“My understanding is that he’s leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”

Law professor “hit student hooker during sex.”

This is either a really inappropriate or really good time to say that Counterforce is against violence towards sex workers. Sex worker rights are human rights.

Just for Peanut, here’s a really cool cover of a Ryan Adams song that I kind of super dig. The original is very U2-ish (like very very very), and the cover, by a band called Company Of Thieves is nice because it doesn’t feature Ryan Adams.

Speaking of which, here’s my favorite scene from Purple Rain (edited though ).

The First Lady (and Voice) of Star Trek died on Thursday.

Pain hurts more if the person doing it means it, which segues nicely into…

Karl Rove’s IT Guru dies in a plane crash. Don’t piss off Karl Rove. Travis Barker and DJ AM pissed him off and you saw the warning he sent them, right?

The 15 weirdest Jeff Goldbum moments.

The 7 images that are too badass to be real (but totally are). Like… this one:

Batgirl demands equal pay! (You know I hope you get it, Bats)

“Sick and beyond belief.” A woman who hasn’t seen her son in 14 years finally finds him on a social networking site. Can you guess what happens next?

And if you want to give yourself a sick and beyond belief feeling, here’s Amy Winehouse topless.

The five best music videos of 2008.

Speaking of music, while we’ll probably throw in our song of the year in Monday’s part two of Counterforce’s top albums of the year (because by now you’ve definitely read and obsessed over part one, yes?), I will happily share with you the runner up for song of the year right here (though this song comes in a very scary and distant third place). Hold onto your shit though, kids, this is a hot track:

My Year In Lists, part one: Are we human or are we dancer?

Posted by Marco Sparks & Lollipop Gomez on December 19, 2008

Well, the year is even closer to an end than it was before, and since we’ve been threatening it for a while now, prepare thyself for…

THE Counterforce ULTRA SUPER MEGA BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR OF OUR BLOG 2008 OR THEREABOUTS LIST!

part one

Why would there be more than one part? Because while it’s been a kind of not quite fantastic year for music, there have some good albums this year, so we’ve decided to split this up a little. On Monday, we’ll give you the official Best Of The Best, but today, we break down for you, by category, some runners up…

(A much simpler way to sum it up would be… today we’re human. And next week? Dancer. I think.)(LG: Or Danza? )(MS: Hold me closer, Tony Dannzzaaaa!” Okay, sorry.)

Alright, enough bullshit. Let’s do this!

Best album to pretend you’re in a brooding French film about a sad love affair:

M83, Saturdays=Youth.

Lollipop Gomez: And not just any love affair. The saddest one. The film will have a bunch of long, one take shots of you walking down a corridor with a blank expression on your face, while you flash back to all the amazing sex you had, that you’ll never have again. And we’ll follow you into your apartment, where only your cat will greet you and you’ll sink into bed and listen to this album in the dark while staring at the ceiling, snorting a line of Xanax and falling asleep. Yes, I just described every single day of my life.

Marco Sparks: But in the 1980s. Hello, Molly Ringwald-ish girl on the cover!

Best album by an artist that I used to consider wack and probably should still:

Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III.

Marco: Others have have put the surprising effectiveness of Lil Wayne into verbal context much better, so I’m not even going to try. That’s just an invite to fall flat on one’s face. Instead, I’ll sum up this artist and this album on a very personal level: Lil Wayne is the Riki-Oh of the rap game!

LG: All I could ever hope to say about Lil Wayne is summed up beautifully in my favorite essay of the year, I Will Forever Remain Faithful by David Ramsey. His amazing single “Lollipop” is definitely my favorite song of the year (why? because well… shorty wanna thug? bottles in the club). It’s also where I got my Counterforce nom de plume.

Best album to autotune your broken heart to:

Kanye West, 808s & Hearbreak.

LG: My brother has listened to this non stop for several days now, so I disagree on principal. But Kanye provided some of the best LOLs of the year with his blog. To wit, a quote from my favorite entry:

“I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall… Why???? I understand if people don’t like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I’ve ever had in my life. This is the most offended I’ve ever been… this is the maddest I ever will be. I’m typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!! “

Best sugar sweet Swedish import you can sing and dance along to with little to no shame:

Lykke Li, Youth Novels.

Marco: I think I’ll speak for Lollipop and myself here and put this simply and succinctly: Just listen to this album. And then you’ll feel it. And then you’ll know what all the people are talking about. And here’s Brittany Julious talking about just that.

Best album to do blow to in the bathroom of a hipster club while wearing dirty skinny jeans:

Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles.

LG: I love this shit. It is sweaty dancing in a bar with a plastic cup of gin and tonic in my hand, wailing my hair around. It’s waiting forever to use the bathroom at a stinky club and finally forcing the dudes fucking in there to get the hell out. It’s making out in the photobooth, fingerless Marc by Marc Jacobs striped gloves, drinking coffee on a walk of shame home at 5 am. It’s youth and energy and dark and all that entails.

Marco: When I first glanced at the above paragraph, the only words I saw were “finger” and “fucking” at first. But I could not agree more with Lollipop. This is (controversial) danceable video game music gone crazy and then it was used perfectly in an episode of Skins, which I loved. I know, I know. Shut up about Skins, already.

Best album that’s been called James Joycean in someone’s end of the year list:

Girl Talk, Feed The Animals.

LG: I guess we’re required to like this, huh? I like the mashup of the 90s hits. I personally have never forgotten Here Comes The Hotstepper. I’m glad to see someone else still remembers.

Best indie dance pop album with a touch of the shoegazery:

Friendly Fires, Friendly Fires.

Best album by a great rapper going electrotechnotastic:

Common, Universal Mind Control.

Marco: It missed it’s originally intended summer release date (and thus vacated it’s original title of Invincible Summer) because Common’s becoming a movie star, but this album still has some hot shit on it.

Best Canadian post-punk caterwaul dissonant soundscape album:

Women, Women.

Marco: For some reason, when people say to me, “Hey, this album sounds like the end of the world,” I really pay attention. Well, does this sound like the end? Maybe only just a little, but in a lovely, poppy sort of way. (I should probably make special honorable mentions for Chad VanGaalen’s album and the Azeda Booth album here, too.) This is their myspace page.

Best Stereolab album of the year:

Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, Stereolab, Chemical Chords.

Best album that I should mention here because I don’t see it mentioned anywhere else and that’s a shame, a real shame:

The Roots, Rising Down.

Marco: As with the last few albums by Jimmy Fallon’s upcoming Max Weinberg Seven, this is not a chill album, but it is a good album, and a tense one, dealing with the racism in the music industry, how fucked up the world is, and a fin de siècle vibe that’s been floating around for a while. The title comes from William T. Vollmann’s massive Rising Up And Rising Down: Some Thoughts On Violence, Freedom, And Urgent Means, and it’s fitting since The Roots have always been about the “urgent means” in our culture.

Best double header by the international tweexcore underground:

Los Campesinos, Hold On Now, Youngster… and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.

Marco: Oh, you crazy fun Welsh bastards. Congrats to you for not only putting on a super fun debut album, that’s intensely and immensely likable despite of or maybe because of it’s nuclear level pretentiousness, but then to follow it up with a high quality debut mere months later. Brilliant good fun.

Best Icelandic post-rock super folk party:

Sigur Rós, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (which translates as With Buzzing In Our Ears We Play Endlessly).

Marco: I honestly don’t know what to say about this band that hasn’t been said before, but better. There’s no super epic “Glosoli” or “Staralfur” here, but maybe that’s because this album feels slightly more grounded, somewhat more intimate, and a tad skittish in a really fun way. Plus, any album that necessitates this perfect NSFW video is always aces in my book.

David Byrne & Brian Eno “Home” (mp3)

Friendly Fires “I’m Good, I’m Gone” (Lykke Li cover)(mp3)

Friendly Fires (ft. Au Revoir Simone) “Paris” (Aeroplane remix)(mp3)

Stereolab “Three Women” (mp3)

Women “Group Transport Hall” (mp3)

Azeda Booth “Ran” (mp3)

Music news: U2 announce the title of their new album (fucking finally), and Brian Eno is going to score Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. Brian Eno is going to jump Peter Jackson’s not so lovely bones. There. I Said it. There’ll probably not be a second Postal Service album (any time soon), Andy Samberg talks about the upcoming album from The Lonely Island, and Sparks (the liquid cocaine) is dead, long live Marco Sparks?

The Onion AV Club‘s celebrity guest list of best albums of the year. Also, the AV Club talking about the most awesome-ist band names this year. Here’s a nice collection of end of the year lists for just about everything and Stephen King lists some 70s music and some sleaze rock in his top albums of the year, while calling Girl Talk just as dense as Ulysses, but you can dance to it (see above), and citing AC/DC, Buckcherry, and The Pretends as his top albums of the year. Wikipedia is nice enough to give you a rundown of music in 2008, and here’s This Recording‘s top 20 albums of the year, Rolling Stone‘s top 50, and, of course, Pitchfork’s top picks for individual best songs of the year and top 50 albums. All of these lists are decent attempts at being the definitive subject, but we’ll see you back here on Monday for the real deal, yes? Oh yes

children schmildren.

Posted by Peanut St. Cosmo on December 19, 2008

hoooowdy! since christmas time is upon us, i thought i would do a nice cheery little post to get us all in the holiday spirit. i read a news story recently that was basically four years old. clearly, yahoo news is on top of their shit. it was about various schools across the U.S. that were having a difficult time controlling students with learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD, kids with emotional problems, etc. if you’re a teacher and you have one of these kids in your class and they get out of control, it’s not like the good old days when you could just beat them.

altar boy boot camp

no no no….as controversial and mostly outlawed as that is, it’s just not enough. these teachers/babysitters of heathens need something more intimidating to scare unruly kids into being calm as hindu cows. the answers lies in…..seclusion rooms!

educators standing by to book your room now! ask for Triple A discounts!

in these little cells/rooms, kids take “time outs.” prison, anyone? states such as michigan state that children should not be kept in these “rooms” for more then 15 minutes at a time. 24 states accept them for use in schools and have written guidelines that tell schools the conditions for such rooms. one such room in murrayville, georgia (HA!) held a 13 year old autistic boy named jonathan king. according to his teacher, jonathan had some behavioral problems. was frequently sent to one of these seclusion rooms. was said by his parents to be an loving and happy child. another day goes by and his teacher sends him off for a time out. the normal person in charge of keeping an eye on the kids in seclusion is out sick, and there’s a sub in place. jonathan is wearing a cord on his pants in place of a belt to keep his pants up. while in seclusion, little jonathan hangs himself with his cord/belt. according to his teacher, he had been threatening suicide for a few weeks. so you send him off into seclusion with a device that could assist you in killing yourself. brilliant! this happened in november of 2004, yes it’s just now catching on as breaking news.

anderson cooper can suck my mic.

around every holiday time, a few years back, i used to reread catcher in the rye. it does take place during that holiday season, and is in no way holiday related, or cheerful for that matter. but for the first time in a couple years, i really have the strong urge to read it again. maybe it’s the idea of walking around a big nearly anonymous city having a nervous breakdown, but with absolute freedom. i would love to do half of that, only unpublished…..side note, the ducks in central park….where do they go?

hand sanitizer. never leave home without it.

wow, here i am thinking it’s easy street being a card shark….but apparently there’s even cooler jobs out there! and no, this isn’t the pathetic jon favreau from swingers…..you too could potentially be this cool! but just in case, update your resume.

when will 2009 hurry up and ring in so some nice decent cds can be released???? i know marco covered this topic recently, but seriously….i haven’t had a decent cd come at my way in quite sometime!

so in my (possible?) new years resolution, i hope to be more counterforce friendly, more informed, as well as a good student as that is to be my main goal for the next decade-ish. what will be your resolution, one that you actually intend to keep? i leave you with this kids, but hopefully with resolutions in place, you will be fucking sick of me in the new year……

don't measure, just chug.

It was I who was looking at her for the first time.

Posted by Marco Sparks on December 17, 2008

I’m sure that The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is going to be a fine movie (read: probably not totally horrible). Fincher, despite maybe not capitalizing on his talents and seizing opportunities like he should (and wasting time befriending jackasses like Fred Durst), is still a fine director. And Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt, you know? Angelina and he may be their own walking, talking tabloid franchise and have a complete little league team living under their roof, but he’s still a solid actor, right? Her too, besides the dreck she sometimes lowers herself too. But still, the trailer for Button freaks me out.

Why? Plain and simple: The images of Pitt as a tiny old man, thanks to movie magic special effects. It throbs the vein of two of the things that scare me the most in this world: old people and midgets. Combine them and the hair on my body parts stands up and tries to strangle me with fright.

The sad thing is that I sit here, ruminating on that, and I wonder to myself if the original short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is in the public domain (a quick check tells me that it was published in 1922, so yeah, that’s public domain). I have to remind myself that “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button” is by F. Scott, and not James Thurber like I always want to think it is. Maybe I’m getting “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” and it confused, maybe? Who knows, but now I’m thinking of one of my favorite Thurber stories, for some reason, which I’ll happily share with you thanks to the beauty of fair use:

“The Little Girl And The Wolf“

by James Thurber

One afternoon a big wolf waited in the dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. “Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?” asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.

When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother’s house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.

(Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowasdays as it used to be.)

How very true.

I’d love to share my other favorite Thurber story with you, but I don’t want to push the limits too much. But it’s a classic, so most likely, you’ve read it before. It’s “The Unicorn In The Garden,” which I’m happy to report that you can read right here.

Other stories I’d like to share with you at the moment (some in the public domain and some not):

“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

“The Bet” by Anton Chekhov.

“Lamb To The Slaughter” and “Man From The South” and pretty much anything from Someone Like You or Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl. Oh, and “Beware Of The Dog.”

“The Lady Or The Tiger?” by Frank R. Stockton, and “The Discourager Of Hesitancy.”

“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin.

“The Birthday Of The Infanta” by Oscar Wilde.

“Araby” by James Joyce. And, of course, “The Dead“

“Eyes Of A Blue Dog” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which starts out like this: And then she looked at me. I thought she was looking at me for the first time. But then, when she turned around behind the lamp and I kept feeling her slippery and oily look in back of me, over my shoulder, I understood that it was I who was looking at her for the first time.

Here’s a bit on other adaptations of the Little Red Riding Hood story. And The Onion‘s best films of 2008. Salon reviewed The Wrestler and this is Slate‘s best books of the year list. Oh, and this is Stephen King’s top ten films of the year, a list that literally includes Death Race and The Ruins on it, a list on par with how horrible his selections for top albums of the year, but that’s a whole other shitty story. And here’s a bit on the daily writing routines of science fiction writers. Until next time, beware the big bad wolf out there, kids.

Bitter fucking cold

Posted by Benjamin Light on December 16, 2008

Benjamin Light is miserable with a cold and needs to get some sleep, but he finally has the good internets, so he’d like to hit a couple small points.

Exhibit A:

Yahoo! tells it like it is.

I love that the headline writer threw in the “bitterly.” I concur. Tomorrow has a low of 30 (30!) and rain all day. That is balls. Also, are we in a new era of inane yellow journalism?

Exhibit B:

not buying it

Gee, that’s great that Trojan’s trying to Save Africa (or at least Bristol) or something, by raising money for charity, but come on, what’s the material cost to produce a million condoms really come out to? $3,000? I guess they want you to associate the Trojan brand with philanthropy and doing good deeds when you stumble into an AM/PM at 2:15 am with someone who’s name you can’t remember and need some prophylactics, lest the Mistake you’re about to make turn into a Big Mistake.

But still, “Hold on, let me put it on. Ah shit, now I’m thinking about Hotel Rwanda… … fuck. Hey, it happens to a lot of guys…”

Oh, wait, I just clicked the link, it’s not even for Africa, it’s for the fucking Americans. Is the economy seriously that bad? I’m sure available contraception helps, but isn’t the lack of sex ed really the problem? That and all the beers it took to seal the deal?

Whatever. I got some mixed berry flavor generic nyquil at the store. I phantasy-ed it would taste better than cherry. I was wrong.

Exhibit C: …I so wish this were real. I mean, I’m sure that’s basically how it went down.

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me for one second Rod. And I want you to listen carefully, because this is the last time I’m ever going to talk to you. You are fucking dead to me. You been fucking dead to Barack since ’06, now you’re dead to me. Know what that means? That means you’re dead to my people in Chicago, Daley on down, and all these friends you think you have aren’t gonna touch you with a ten foot fucking pole… Listen up asshole. The shit’s gonna hit the fan, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, and when Fitz finally brings down the hammer it’s gonna be my name that’s going through your head. You won’t know the hows or the fucking whys, but it’s gonna have my fucking fingerprints all over it. Have a great life fatso.”

-Rahm Emanuel

Rahm!

Guess who, Batman?

Posted by Marco Sparks on December 15, 2008

“We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear – fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on a vague charge of being a terrorist sympathizer.”

-Hunter S. Thompson, “Extreme Behavior In Aspen,” February 3, 2003.

A couple of week ago, maybe two to be more precise, a friend said this to me: “Have you heard ‘The Fear’ yet? I know you’re a fan.” I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about so my first thoughts went immediately to Hunter S. Thompson, whose musings on the Fear (and the Loathing) I’ve always been a fan of. Also, for some strange reason, my thoughts also went back to this:

Donnie Darko, which is, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, such a cliche now. They’re making a sequel, which is the kind of thing that stirs unneccesary fear in me. The only cast member returning for it is the girl who played Donnie’s little sister, Daveigh Chase, who’s made quite an interesting filmography for herself, including appearing as Samara in the American remake of The Ring. She was smart enough to not return for the second one, but apparently not that smart when it comes to a Donnie Darko sequel.

But no, what he was referring to was Lily Allen’s new single, “The Fear,” from her upcoming album, It’s Not Me, It’s You. It looks and sounds a little something like this:

Here I am again, excited about an album that’s yet to come out (the release date is scheduled for the end of January) when I should be reflecting on music from this year right about now. I guess that tells you a lot about music from this year, huh?

Lily Allen is a lot like my love for Metric, in that I loved her before she came to America, and then she did and the rest of you heard about her (“the rest of you” being admittedly a very general term when I’m mostly talking about those of you who suck), and (suck hard) it just ruined it (you know who you are) for me. But time has passed (and soon the Fear with it) and as this year comes to an end, I’m looking forward to what next year might have in store for us.

I’ve previously shared Lily Allen’s “Guess Who Batman (Fuck You Very Much)” about our current President, so today I’ll share with you her cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.” You can also listen to Ladyhawke’s cover of the same song here (if I had to make you a best of 2008 list, which I probably will, Ladyhawke could certainly be on it, just not in the top 20). And though I don’t care about Britney pretty much at all, I will say that the recent Rolling Stone interview with her is a very interesting look at a completely manufactured and manipulated woman, devoid of a childhood and trying to appear sexy over fresh beats and a crumbling life. The stuff of pure pop genius in 2008, maybe?

Lily Allen - Womanizer (Britney cover)(mp3)

Sci-Friday.

Posted by Marco Sparks on December 12, 2008

Klaatu Barada Nikto!

I honestly can’t believe they’re remaking The Day The Earth Stood Still. I really can’t.

Well, let me rephrase that: I can’t believe they’re remaking it so poorly. Oh. Wait. Yes, I can. I totally can. Ugh.

And Don Draper’s in it, ha ha! Awesome. According to the wikipedia article on the remake, Keanu only did it (he considers it to be a re-imagining, not a remake) because he was such a fan of the original as a kid and glad that they removed Klaatu’s “big stick” speech from the end. Color me surprised that Keanu is against the big stick.

I’m not going to talk about the film that much, because… well, if you haven’t seen the original, then I don’t know who you are and you’re probably not interested in this post anyways. Sucks to be you! But I will say that I’m sad to see that the remake, er, “re-imagining” didn’t bring over the original film’s anti-war (also, anti-nuclear) message, instead going for a much more “Hollywood PC-friendly” environmental preservation message.

The updates to Gort and the ship, which is now biological, are interesting (apropos of nothing, is it me or are Jennifer Connelly and Naomi Watts basically the same person now, just with different colored hair?) and as far as Klaatu is concerned, well, Keanu was probably born to play this part, big stick or not.

Every Friday, or thereabout, on the Counterforce tumblr, I share a few classic and sometimes not so classic sci fi stories that I’ve enjoyed over the years or am curious about or interested in. Stuff you should know about (if you don’t already)! And I figured that today that would do the same thing, but for realsies here at Counterforce, starting with:

Contact, released in 1997, directed by Robert, and based on the novel by Carl Sagan. I’ve always wanted to read the book, but sadly, never have. The movie, which I watched last week for the first time in years, still holds up (even with the cgi’d in Bill Clinton scenes) as both fun and smart, and nicely scratches by sci fi itch, and manages to deal with (in a not totally condescending way) matters of belief and faith in a higher power, whether that be the Christian Sky Bully or high advanced extraterrestial alien beings sending us messages from across the stars. Jodie Foster is excellent as always in her special Jodie Foster way (by now it’s no secret that I have a crush on Jodie Foster, right?)(Yes, I know, she probably doesn’t like me back) and even McConaughey’s decent in this film, but this is years before he perfected his bohemian hobo swerve. Also, I learned from Wikipedia that Sagan was paid a $2 million advance for the novel, the highest at the time for a then unwritten work.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.