Well, I guess the Rapture didn’t happen, huh? Not today, I guess. I mean, I’m still here. You’re reading this, so I guess you’re still here too, huh? The sad thing about “The Rapture” is that, well, besides it being a fictional event in a set of fables in a funny book of short stories about wizards and demons and old world customs, is that… well, I just don’t know anyone who would be going up in this fantastical sounding Rapture thing. It’s just for the good, right? Well, all the people I know are bad, bad people… And I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Oh well, a shame. But I suppose the Internet will quickly find something else for itself to get excited about, right? But there’s still us and there’s tomorrow and a little more juice to be squeezed out of whatever could be “the future” and there’s whatever could possibly come with that…
This trailer looks so so, but the movie will probably suck: Another Earth.
It’s Pilot Season! Trailers for (just a few of the) new TV shows that were just picked up:
Awake. Which… looks good, looks interesting, but I just don’t see a TV show that I would follow/watch for years and years there. Funny how both it and Another Earth‘s trailer use that song by the Cinematic Orchestra.
Alcatraz. The latest from the J.J. Abrams camp… The 4400 meets Prison Break, featuring Sam Neill and Hurley from Lost. This looks ridiculous, and I’ll watch it and just hope that it’s not another letdown like Fringe.
Person Of Interest. Another from J. J. Abrams, although it seems like it’s mostly just his name on it and the real creative juice is from Jonathan Nolan, writer of The Dark Knight and brother of Christopher. Looks interesting-ish, but Jim Caviezel? Was that really necessary?
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”
-Dennis Gabor
I had a dream a while back that the world was ending… It was an odd dream, but not a terrible one, I guess. It’s just not something you can prepare for, the end of the world. You can’t ever really be ready for it. You just gotta keep on living, don’t you? And loving and listening to music and dancing and pursuing impossible things and enjoying mundane moments and people and doing all kinds of stupid shit. Take things seriously but maybe enjoy the ridiculous things that surround you just a little bit more? I don’t want to tell you something terribly cliched, like… Live every moment like it’s your last!
No, don’t do that. You’ll probably hurt yourself trying to do that.
But maybe every once in a while, take a single moment and consider that it is your last moment on this beautiful, insane planet, and just really ponder that. And think about what you would do if it wasn’t. Beam yourself into the future and peek in on yourself and see what you’re up to. Take a vacation into the future and see who you are there. Interview yourself and find out what went right and wrong in your life in the moments/weeks/months/years between now and then, and take good notes. And when you come back to the present, remember that little trip. Remember that time you went to the future and appreciate that you’re back here, and now, and then go there again.
Oh well, hopefully this one was good practice for the next time the world (supposedly) ends. Still plenty of time to get your Rapture Playlist just fucking perfect. No sleep til 2012!
I’m in a mood tonight to watch The Shining. Well, tonight or tomorrow sometime. I’m a scary movie mood, I guess. Something festive. Something seasonal. And I’m open to suggestions. Conrad Noir suggested The Exorcist which, no joke, I’ve never seen. Occam Razor suggested The Wicker Man remake with Nic Cage which, unfortuanetly, I have seen. And Benjamin Light made a joke about some new movie about a reanimated zombie pop star called This Is It.
All work and no play puts Marco Sparks in a mellow Halloween mood. The Shining, it is. Martin Scorsese agrees with me. Trick or treat, you sons of bitches.
Some thoughts the song “Spill The Wine” by Eric Burdon and War, featured on the album Eric Burdon Declares “War,” which came out the same year as their other collaborative album, The Black-Man’s Burdon.
When I was a kid, this song only seemed to come on when I was deep in the throes of night, or sleep, or perhaps madness.
Some “interesting” facts about “Spill The Wine” via songfacts:
This song features a harmonica, flute, and conga drums.
This is widely believed to be about, or at least heavily influenced by drugs. According to Brown, this song celebrates women: “All ladies are beautiful. You’ve got to look at them. God, I believe, put all of us here and made us all different so we could be like the flowers, you know. Like women. I look at them as beautiful flowers. Even when they get older, the flowers and so on, and that’s what it really boils down to, they can be skinny, big, fat, I’ve seen some fine voluptuous women. And then I’ve seen some that are skinny, and if you look at them, they could be beautiful, depending on personality and stuff.”
Jimi Hendrix‘ former girlfriend sang backup. Hendrix was managed by Animal’s bass player Chas Chandler.
The lady speaking Spanish in the background was Eric Burdon’s girlfriend. Says Brown: “We went back there and we put up a little tent, candlelight, and some wine back there. They were behind there, and Eric was doing things to her and making her talk.”
This was used in the movie Boogie Nights as part of a pool party scene with the porn stars.
The Isley Brothers covered this in 1971 on their album Givin’ It All Back.
And that sounds a little something like this:
As a kid, I had the radio on a lot. This was when the radio was better, mind you, and I kept it around like a secret lover or some kind of invisible friend. I’d cheat on it a lot with CDs and tapes and vinyl, a lot, but many a night I spent seized in a radio daze, or I’d listen to it while getting ready for school or for work or a dance or a date or something.
One of the many species classified under the larger phylum “alternarock.”
For most of high school it was the “alternative rock” station for me, but I did flirt a year there with the “alternative rock” station that was slightly harder, which basically meant that I had to put up with a lot of bullshit like “mandatory Metallica” and following up a band like Kittie or Jane’s Addiction with AC/DC. How sad is it that I can’t remember the good songs I got in return from that station? I just remember they played “Bound For The Floor” a lot.
Rewinding the tape back to somewhere in my much younger years when I was a stupid little shit who’d read, daydream, ponder, fascinate, and shit along with the radio, you should probably know I kept floating back and forth between classic rock and Motown. Those were my bag back then.
Hence all of my old school music knowledge/anecdotes being about things like Keith Moon’s addiction to horse tranquilizers or waxing nostalgic about Berry Gordy’s sex habits.
The Who’s “Who Are You?” was about Keith’s tendency to pass on street corners during drug binges only to be discovered by police the next day who assumed he was dead.
Anyway. I remember the Animals’ “House Of The Rising Sun” and I knew War’s “Cisco Kid” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” The radio loved those songs. And then I heard this song one night, “Spill The Wine,” and it was late at night as my father were driving around, lost in the Hollywood hills, high above the world. It was a mash up by two artists I liked before I knew what a mash up. I was tired, my eyes were heavy, and this song started dictating images to me as I looked down at the world, and I would get lost in the idylls of walking through the set of a Hollywood movie that was packed with mountain kings and a harem of women and wine spilt all about. And I was easily swept away in the mystical and engimatic nature of the song, which everyone assumes the song refers to drugs, which it does in a way, but you have to remember that the prizely grown native drug of California will always be sex, and the song enthusiastically endorses going after that pearl as many times as you can get it. If I had actually known what a clitoris was back when I was a kid, well…
This is my rough estimation of what your top Halloween costumes will look like this year…
1. Michael Jackson. I don’t think this will be a big surprise. We love death! Especially celebrity death, and what better way to celebrate a man who had faded into a rather ghoulish appearance/existence/notoriety than to dress up in his horrifying visage on All Hallow’s Eve. It’s a special kind of homage. For reference, see…
2. The Joker/Heath Ledger. This appeals to the above mentioned death fetishists, those fuckers who dress like clowns/painted demons every goddamn year, and Crow/Cure fans 3.0. As annoying as this gets once you’ve seen it forty times at the same party, it could be worse people. The same guy dressed up in a Joker costume could instead be dressed up in some kind of fishnet mesh shirt… thing.
3. Pirate. Ugh. Shiver my timbers, you morons. Go walk a plank. Seinfeld summed it up best years ago: But I don’t wanna be a pirate! This is not the costume of a self respecting man. The Dread Pirate Robert being the only exception, of course. And last but not least…
Anything “sexy,” or…
…”adult”-ish, or…
…involving cat ears or devil horns. Hey, I’m not judging. And I’m not really complaining either. It’s an interesting place to be. Intellectually, I respect a woman who wants to dress up like Amelia Earhart or Marie Curie or Lucrezia Borgia or whatever. But then again, if you want dress up like Wonder Woman or a sexy astrophysicist or a sexy brain surgeon, I’m okay with that too. In fact, more power to you.
But, me, personally, I’m going to go with the dark horse candidate this Halloween. This year it’s all about the infamous figure everyone will be dressing up as next year: Roman Polanski.
It’s either that, or something involving a cape. And I don’t know what the going rate on capes are these days, but I think this will be cheaper.
This costume really only requires a camera, some qualuudes, and an invite back to Jack Nicholson’s house. It’s the perfect thing for a very frugal season. And, on the plus side, it’s so very, very, very much in incredibly bad taste.
…was, up until the 16th century, the original name that mariners had for sharks:
As of right now, mariners and seamen (and women) don’t have a cooler nickname for pictures of hot girls with animal heads:
But you just know they’re working on it.
The other day, bored at work, Conrad and I noticed one of those stupid internet games and, just for shits and giggles, played along. This one: Go to google and put in your name followed by the word “needs,” as in “Conrad needs” and list the first five hits.
Five things that Conrad needs: Help, help, a friend, a kidney, and to die.
I’m still laughing at that.
Five things that Marco needs: A sleeping bag, help (always), a release (always), “to learn,” and a beer. Thanks, internet!
Perhaps related or not so related, just over a year ago, Benjamin Light mentioned something outlandishly foolish to me. I really thought he was off his meds, no joke. But he had that kind of dangerous, scary clarity that only a nutcase can have. The kind where you don’t turn your back on them, are afraid to look them in the eye, and you pretty much agree with whatever the fuck they say just so you can get out of the room with her genitalia intact. He said to me, “I think I want to start a blog.”
And I – always the level headed one – said, “What? You’re fucking crazy.”
And not to brag too much, but we’ve seen a few faces and we’ve rocked them all!
Sometimes we’ve felt like we’re a bit alien ourselves, or maybe we’re transmitting to you from outer space, but we do it anyway. We do it because, no joke, there is something very seriously wrong with us and we love it.
This Recording already used the blog as a spaceship metaphor that I would love to use here, but rather than appropriate it here, I’m just gonna outright steal it. But rather than a proper spaceship, Counterforce is the fucked up. The weird one. The one that the prisoners took over and started running their own way. Like Spock and Nero and all of those pointy eared fuckers, we’re bursting through your black holes and disrupting your time stream and hopefully reality as well. Hello there, we’re from the future. We’re in your here and now and you’re our living sexy museum and we’re yours. Don’t take us to your leader, because we only care about you.
Not that we haven’t made some mistakes. Sometimes we’ve been really on our games and sometimes… well, really off them. That’s usually on me though, I’m not gonna lie. As blogonauts, we’re still learning out here in space. There’s a few less rings on Saturn because, well, we crashed into them just a little. Same with the Big Dipper. We did something inappropriate with a black hole for the same people climb Everest. Also, we found life on Mars and then accidentally blogged it out of existence. And Halley’s comet won’t make it’s way back to this solar system for a few more years than it was already scheduled to because we saw it, liked it’s style, were in kind of a naughty bad place, and now, long story short, it won’t look our way, won’t return our phone calls, and wants to take a break with the Earth. Our bad, kids.
That said, we’re still here, and even though we’re sometimes the blogging equivalent of the chaos cloud that will someday end all life on Earth, we’re also hopefully going to only get better. Help us? Tell us what you think. Tell us how much we rock, or how hard we suck. Tell us what you want to see and maybe, just maybe, we won’t poke your eyes out.
We’ve been proud so far that with us, you’ve gotten basically 6+ different blogs, some that overlap, and some that are drastically different. We’ve enjoyed it and hope you have too. My co-bloggers all wanted to be more involved in our very special 1 year birthday here, but most were busy with jobs and living sexy lives of danger and adventure. Benjamin Light has been off the grid and we eagerly await his return, and his shocked disgust at how I’ve trainwrecked this beast in his absence. And Occam’s probably not speaking to me since he realized that I stole some CDs from his house during a Lost party. And Lollipop especially wanted to remind you of how much greater the blog has gotten since she first commented and then joined us (and she’s more right than she’s wrong about that) and August Bravo wants to let you know that he’s giving up Heroes due to relentless scrutiny. Bravo, August Bravo.
This is where I wrap it up. If it was just me closing this up, I’d say something like: We’ll see you out there, space cowboys and cowgirls. But instead I found someone to put it even better than I can…
And now a special word from the desk of Peanut St. Cosmo:
hello readers! funny to think we’ve been in existence on this “series of tubes” for a year now! it feels kinda like the first rocky year of a marriage and if you make it, you figure you’ve got about six more years before the itch comes on and you’re both fucking the pool boy/baby sitter and filing for divorce. you get the idea, i give us six more years until you call it quits on us, but you’ll never find a better lay! i promise you, i’m the best you ever had!!!
but in all seriousness, i do appreciate the two of you who like my infrequent posts. thanks for stopping by
1. This video is fucking awesome. Even by 90s standards, even by any standards at all, it just is. Take a moment. Be reminded. Reflect. Respect.
2. As just a wee little kid, my mind was fucking blown when I saw this 14 years ago.
3. I got into a random conversation with a group of strangers today about MJ while waiting around in a line for something. We touched upon why a lot of people will miss this artist, who hasn’t been “relevant” in years: It’s like when you were growing up and your parents would track your growing height in notches against a wall.
This is you, 3 years old, one notch would say. This is you, 6 years old, another would say. This is you, 10 years old. This is you, 15 years old and awkwardly tall.
I can make the same metaphor with notches on a bed post and tales of your life as a sexual conquistador if that helps.
Michael’s career was your marking post. Dangerous evokes memories of a certain part of my life. Bad another. Even Invincible brings back certain memories. And with HIStory it was me entering high school, free from the stagnant shackles of junior high, and possibly going on to become a person, with questionable results, but who knows.
But that’s where a lot of people come from. If you didn’t like the man or his music, that’s cool, that’s even understandable, but respect that that’s where a lot of people are coming from.
4. I even remember the first time I saw this, while waiting for it’s big mega massive world premiere on MTV. I can vividly remember the house of the two dorks I was at when I saw this. It’s directed by Mark Romanek, and cost $7 million, then unheard of amazingly. I can even remember my friend’s mom who walked in during the middle of the song and just stayed to watch, mesmerized by the whole thing. When the song ended, she said, “Wow, Michael’s pissed, isn’t he?”
5. I wish Michael had stopped the evolution of who and what he was, at least appearances-wise, around here. I mean, look at him here, he’s practically a living, breathing anime character.
6. Watching this back then, I realized – if I somehow hadnt’ realized it before – that Janet Jack was fucking hot.
7. I had a similar reaction when I saw her video for “If.” And, of course, when I saw the video for “Any Time, Any Place.” Real talk, people.
8. In the past, MJ usually came up with the premises for his videos and then let the directors flesh them out, but this was the first time he let a director give him the premise, with Romanek did.
9. The premise is amazing, to me, at least. Michael and Janet, on an expansive, luxurious looking spacecraft, speeding away through the constant nighttime of space. They should be happy, but they’re not. They’re furious about something! Are they getting away from the press, or from persecution? Or are they prisoners? Are they rebels? Are they escaping or being sent away?
10. Are they traveling through the uncanny valley?
11. I totally want to do that futuristic raquetball/smashing vases thing. That would be so cool.
12. I have to say, I really don’t have a problem with people not liking or attacking Michael now. Checking just a small sampling of the reporting of his death, I’ve noticed that the praisers and mourners are (understandably) being met with equal measure by the detractors and demonizers. On both sides, you’ve got normal people and zealots and idiots. I guess there’s too much to not be upset about still. Michael was almost living, breathing contradiction in some cases, victim of circumstances at some points, I feel, but also pushed the limits of his own weird constant child thing a little too far.
13. Speaking of walking a fine line:
I love that picture. Michael Jackson and Woody Allen at Studio 54 in 1977? Ha ha. Perfect.
15. Someone said to me, “I’m so sorry that you’re upset about Michael Jackson’s death.” It was both serious with concern for me and “my loss,” but also undeniably condescending, though not intentionally on their part. I don’t think I’d say that I was all that broken up. Mostly still in a, pardon the pun, state of shock. At one point I was so weirded out that maybe I wanted to scream out, pardon the pun again, but again, it was just so werid. I didn’t know the man, thankfully, and the music isn’t going anywhere, and no matter how much I held out hopes, I knew he was never going to put out a comeback album (that’s where my hopes lay, not in a new tour, but in more music). To me, it just feels like… An assessment of our world now. It’s right here, it’s right now, and there’s a tiny little hole in planet Earth.
But if you are truly broken up about MJ’s passing, I’m sorry to hear that. Go have a good cry and a scream, okay? No pressure, but seriously, a good scream will be very catharctic for you.
16. God, I would love to have my own supersexy getaway spacecraft for when times are hard. Stop pressuring me, you. It makes me want to scream. In space!
17. HIStory is a really great collection, both as retrospective and as a standalone album. The original material on it is pretty much all hits, I’m happy to say. Of especially poignant note other than this track is “Stranger In Moscow,” which is perfect in a lot of ways.
There are no more real pop stars after yesterday.
18. It was reported that around the time of making this video, that Michael Jackson had bought the ones of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. It’s not true, but he didn’t fight that rumor very hard.
19. This is the first time that Michael and Janet had worked together on a song since she did backing vocals for “P.Y.T.” and it was MJ’s first time working with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, though Janet would go on to work with them several more times. With so much of the hip hop and r&b radio and landscape sounding like The-Dream (not so bad) and Timbaland (kind of getting tired), I’d love to to hear some more Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, for real.
20. If you were concerned, don’t be. This is most likely the last I’ll say on this subject, here or probably anywhere. This song, this artist, and HIStory all need to slowly start taking their place in history.
21. I’m a simple man: I’ll say it again. Space. Spaceship. And Janet Jackson. And those weird morphy art machines. So cool. Those things are all I need to be happy.
22. One last thing about the video specifically: He moonwalks! At one point, while passing the actual moon. It’s so self referential, I love it. Also, part of me still wishes I could moonwalk. I always see people who can kind of do it, you know? Kind of, but not totally. Not for real. I guess you’d have to be the King of Pop to do it for real.
23. This song is a living breathing entity practically, especially compiled with the video images, but not dependent on them. Turn it up, watch it, listen. It’ll crawl inside your brain and stay with you for a while. You’ll be humming it while waiting for the elevator or the guy in the line in front of you at the liquor store or whatever you tumblr folk do. Michael Jackson will be dead, but you’ll still be alive and so will this song, inside of you.
Mad linkage:
Of course Annie Hardy has a tumblr.
Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Food prices will double by 2030.
To the blogger who thinks saying “fuck” means I’m dumb.
Here’s a wild new drug that you should surely know about: Oxi.
David Lynch to release an album
The anniversary of Bikini Atoll
Lady Gaga 
There’s always time in time and space 
Person of the year
One of the many species classified under the larger phylum “alternarock.”
The Who’s “
3. Pirate. Ugh. Shiver my timbers, you morons. Go walk a plank. Seinfeld summed it up best years ago: But I don’t wanna be a pirate! This is not the costume of a self respecting man. The Dread Pirate Robert being the only exception, of course. And last but not least…
Anything “sexy,” or…
from 
from 
Riding a 
from 
What a long strange trip it’s been, right?
Lisa, it’s your birthday. 
There are no more real pop stars after yesterday.
