February 20, 2007
Some Day You Will See Brandon Downing's Short Movies and Say Wow
And so closes our non-week of randomness. Come back and see us kick it proper for a Week 99 bash.
Posted by Rock Heals at 07:00 AM
January 31, 2007
A Very Special Sundance
Pam Martin
Having a friend whose family lives in Park City, UT is a wonderful thing; especially around Sundance time. Though our trip was too short, we were still able to squeeze in a few movies and some stargazing.
The City
Park City is equal parts beautiful and freezing. It’s the kind of place I would love to live if I didn’t absolutely hate the cold.
Coldest/grumpiest moment: Waiting in line for newly released tickets at 7:30am on Saturday after only three hours of sleep.
Most unexpected pleasantry: It’s shockingly easy to get around, with festival shuttles running every five minutes and city buses that ask for “donations only.” Just make sure you get off at the right stop.
The Films
Our Saturday morning cold-fest yielded us a few tickets to Hear and Now, a documentary about a deaf couple in their mid 60’s, Paul and Sally Taylor, who decide to undergo an implant surgery that restores their sense of hearing – to a point.
This was easily one of the most emotional movie-going experiences I’ve ever had. Look for it on HBO in the coming months; and have some Kleenex in hand.
We also got to see Away From Her, actress Sarah Polley’s (The Sweet Hereafter, Go) first feature-length film as a director. This one was also about an older couple dealing with a medical condition – this time, Alzheimer’s. Not the kind of movie I would usually seek out, but it was good.
There’s one movie I’m kind of glad I didn’t get to see... Rumor has it that a few people were seen puking in the aisle during a screening of An American Crime, Terry O’Haver’s retelling of a gruesome 1965 murder, starring Catherine Keener.
I’m definitely intrigued, but I think it’s one I’ll Netflix and watch at home – perhaps with a bucket nearby.
The Celebrities
And then, of course, there were the celebs.
Our trip was bookended by Katherine Moennig and Leisha Hailey (Shane and Alice on The L Word) on the flight to Salt Lake City, and Camryn Manheim (The Practice) on the flight back.
Once in Park City, we had a few high profile misses – among them Kevin Bacon, who had just disappeared after posing for photos with fans on Main Street.
The most frustrating miss for me, though, was Miss Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell. I was standing right next to my friends when they all saw her, but, apparently, I’m blind.
And once again proving that he attends every event, regardless of whether he has any business there, we spotted P. Diddy, not once, but twice in the same night.
The first time he was walking down Main Street drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag and the second time, a few hours later – still on Main Street – he and a friend were debating whether they should get cheeseburgers or turkey burgers for dinner. A question for the ages, indeed.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
January 17, 2007
Hot House 5 for the New Year
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | [music] A Swedish band with a Spanish name that sings quasi-girl group songs in English? Couldn’t make enough sense to me. “God Knows” may feel repetitive at first, but with eat into your brain like Khan’s earwig thingy. Give it/them a listen on their myspace. |
[web-ish] If you accept submissions from people and get all kinds of random crap all the time, a little virus scanning goes a long way. A friend turned me on to this web-based one, HouseCall from Trend Micro and it’s done me well. Takes quite a while to run (it’s free people), just hit go and walk away. Check it out (thanks Mr. Durst) |  |
 | [poetry / web] A great new site from a great Baltimore reading series. If you are a Baltimore poetry-liker or someone who should be reading in Baltimore for the poetry-likers, you should check it out. Soon to contain more pictures, links to recordings of the readings, and more. Get on over there |
[tv] Heard The Wire is some of the best tv ever made? If you’ve “missed it all” rollback to Season 1 and catch up. A drama parading as a cop show with equal time/love for the good and the bad on both sides of the law. Class-casting is an ever-present subtext; Season 4 introduced a group of Baltimore junior high kids. It’s like your heart got jumped. |  |
 | [web / humor] My decompressor of the moment, poaching it for a few minutes every week or so. Funny pictures of cats, usually with added text … LOTS of ’em. Keep up with the latest development in cat-based humor. The picture shown is from my favorite subgenre … “I’m [on/in/etc.] your [object] [verb-ing] your [“related” object].” A phrasing that has been invading my own rhetoric. Git yr laff on |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
October 25, 2006
Hot House 5 For October Cometh
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | [tv] A steam punk sentient robot? Mr. Dog? Emperor Zombie? Abe Lincoln (yes, that Abe Lincoln)? A monkey with a machine gun? Nothing really describes this one sprung from the mind of Mike Mignola (Hellboy). If you scour, I’m sure you can find it online somewhere. We hope (yet doubt) they’ll make more. |
[music] A little folk and a lotta crazy. A little instruments and a lotta drums. I’m loving their freeform approach to songwriting (Lyrics? Fuck’em. We’re just going to screech on this one). This is my fave of their albums and “Tigers” is my favorite song. Everybody’s loving everybody’s loving tigers tigers tigers. Get it |  |
 | [web] Chalk this up as another doing one thing and doing it great web site in the tradition of Is Lost a Repeat?. To paraphrase someone else, the thing about weather.com is that you have to think about whether you need your coat or not. Check for yourself |
[food] This book will wring out your soul, in a good way. A man takes care of his son in a post-apocalyptic world, simple enough. If you’ve read a post-apocalyptic book you’ve been through this plot before. But the telling is incredible. And it’s a quick read. And yes it is almost entirely gray. Get it Extra credit: Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren. |  |
 | [food] So you’re trying to make mousaka and the recipe is calling for “herbs de provence.” Herbs de provence? What the hey? Enter Gourmet Sleuth’s handy substitutions guide. Can’t find cracker meal? They’ll hook you up. Get subbing |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
September 13, 2006
Hot House 5 from 9,000 ft (The Telluride Film Festival)
David Wilson
David Wilson rolls with a dangerous mix of charm and intelligence. He organizes the True/False Film Festival. Fortunate for us, he played our man in the field.
 | Day one. Staff screening. It's Babel, a film that I know nothing about. This is the best part of Telluride. The films are secret until the day the fest starts, and they're pretty much all world premieres. What this means for me as a viewer is that I have no baggage, no reviews, nothing. I watch a movie with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and it makes me cry and gasp and, here I get maudlin, believe in the transformative power of movies. | |
 | Lightning strikes again with Severance. If you had told me that Telluride, bastion of cinematic purity, would show a comedic slasher film, I just might have done a genuine spit-take. But this film is so good. More Aliens than Alien, it's also laugh-out-loud funny. | |
 | Yes, Telluride has the hits, and that's what most of the folks who pay $600-$3500 for their passes want to see. But those hits will all be in movie theaters in a matter of months. What makes this fest great (and makes me travel 1,000 miles to volunteer for them) is bringing films like Playtime back into the public consciousness, and in a gorgeous 70mm print no less. The film, by Jacques Tati, is a hyper-modernist slapstick comedy - Keaton via Beckett maybe. Mostly, it's just SO good. | |
 | Asger Leth, son of Jurgen Leth, whom we all know from the 5 Obstructions, made a doc about Haiti. It's called Ghosts of Cite Soleil and it's fantastic. Telluride doesn't really "believe" in parties, so they saved up all their party mojo for Toronto, where Wyclef Jean played a hour of party bangers, and I got to stand next to Ron fucking Perlman, who was wearing some sort of ECKO Wolverine shirt or something. | |
 | Telluride is the most beautiful place I've ever been. It's expensive and ridiculous and all that stuff, but it's still just ridiculously gorgeous. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
July 05, 2006
Hot House 5: Vacation Survival Guide
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
Rock Heals made the tough trip to the beach for you! We’ve spent our time researching the must-haves for the 2006 vacation season. Don’t be caught riding the lazy river and sipping a baybreeze while the cool kids snicker.
 | [music] Born to Run for the open-window drive to the beach. Nebraska for sipping on a drink after the sun goes down. As Mischa Barton, cultural bellwether, said with her dying breaths in the OC finale, “It’s the summer of Bruce, baby. If you can’t get with him, you can’t get with me.” |
[dvd] British Comedy isn't “my thing,” but League of Gentlemen is as funny as I've seen in years. Set in a small town (Royston Vasey) with its local shop for local people – things get very wrong very fast. Verité camerawork and genre bending (soap opera, horror, etc.) work together toward a single-minded goal: making the funniest funny. One day I found myself trying to explain why I wanted “Rape our dead mouths” written on my wife’s birthday cake, thanks LoG! | 
|
| [book] I read a review of this and said, “Tracey, here’s the book you’ll want to read on vacation.” I was right. About a guy who walks across Afghanistan in early 2002, which probably ain’t so much an advisable idea then or now. Seems he has some time on his hands. Check out the NYT review I read. |
[food] Tilapia, red snapper, catfish – I’ll take ‘em all. Nothing says summer like fresh pico de gallo, simple guacamole, chipotle mayo and some grilled fish for killer tacos. We subbed habañeros for chipotle at yesterday’s Fiesta de la Indepencia -- freedom requires improvisation. Take heed: marinating time for the fish is roughly the length of a World Cup match – you don’t want the fish to cook in the marinade, and you won’t want to miss that goal in the 85th. Enjoy with Mexican beer, margaritas, and/or our fave Paloma. |  |
 | [activity] Drop your heart rate. Drop your blood pressure. Drop everything. And plant your head to pillow for the Slumber of the Ancients. We’re talking serious 8-hour+ stretches. Adrenaline is so late-90s. Don’t be caught dead on bungee cords, kite jumping, or moving faster than a lumbering gait. |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 PM
May 03, 2006
Hot House 5 for May
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
 | The creators of our beloved Pocket Ninjas comes back for more with the Pocket Stache. Rotofugi is plum out of ‘em – so you’ll have to look around to find one of your own, or wait on the nimble fingers of Shawn and his clone army. Make sure to hit their site to read up on the Stache’s checkered past |
Many times during this second season of Lost, my wife and I wondered allowed to one another, “did they decide to just suck?” Whoever left the writing staff was a real loss. But with The Map, Mr. Abrams stepped up the game – wrapping a thousand questions in a tiny package, promising answers… someday… sorta, and giving us something that’s just frickin’ cool. Google away for more than enough views of it. |  |
 | As the Boss said, and then Billy, …roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair… Well the night’s bustin’ open, these two lanes will take us anywhere… My first driving song for the season. Check it out over at Thrill Jockey. |
No shit, this is the best thing to come out for kids’ in a long time. Stripped away everything the kids don’t care about and all that’s left is pure amazing. The kids TV critics (all three of them) like to call it “the first operetta for pre-schoolers”… if that gives you a sense. Current house fave: “Wonder Pets Save the Skunk.” Get a good sense of it online |  |
 > | Who has time for a list of 10 funny things, Dave? Really! One of the many inspirations behind the Hot House 5’s – when he’s on he’s on. I tried to pick one of the more absurd as my example, below. But this guy’s humor is wide ranging, so give it a whirl and another and another. Enjoi, I say! |
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:00 AM
December 28, 2005
Zombies vs. Ninjas
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
In 2005 we saw two distinct little stuffed things rise to the top of the little-stuffed-things heap. This week we offer a simple comparison guide to help you choose which is right for you and your family. Your Winter Gift Giving Holiday may have passed, but any day is a good day to give the gift of zombies and ninjas.
|
vs. | 
|
| www.nopunchbacks.com | www.shawnimals.com | |
| zombie | ninja | |
| unique individuals | clone army | |
| lovingly handmade | clone army | |
| undead | death-dealer | |
| voodoo | bujinkin (ninjitsu) | |
| eats your brains | disembowels you with thumbs |
Posted by Rock Heals at 09:00 AM
Art Basel Miami: A Seth's Eye View
Seth Adelsberger
Leaving the December cold of Baltimore for a week in South Beach was a no-brainer. Art Basel Miami is the largest Contemporary Art Fair in North America, with six other sub-fairs that feed off its pull (NADA, Scope, Omni, Pulse, Aqua, and Frisbee). I packed all of my smallest drawings and one larger deconstructed painting to be rebuilt on site in the hotel room at Frisbee. This being my first art fair, I had no idea what to expect. The sputtering and smoking cab that delivered from the airport to my hotel didn't bode well. But, after some Peruvian ceviche and a few Coronas, anything seemed possible. Over four days much art was seen, much dinero changed hands, great food was eaten, and alcohol became a permanent resident of my body. Here are the top ten happenings that made the trip transformative.
Hotel room installation at Frisbee. Works by Andrew Schoultz (SF), Ryan Wallace (Brooklyn), and Seth Adelsberger (Bmore).
[ed note: We’ll add links to these throughout the week; in the meantime, God gave us Google for a reason!]
1. Deitch Projects "Live Through This" Party. Off the chain: Paperrad, Taylor Mckimens, Misaki Kawai, Matt Leines, Devendra Banhart. All-star and out of control.
2. Aqua Art Fair. The best art fair, hands down. Almost all of the work here was top notch. Mostly West Coast galleries. Slick, hip, casual, clean, free entry, well lit, and reasonably sized. The layout was perfect, allowing it to avoid being overwhelming. Bought two works on paper from Winnipeg based Other Gallery. One: a collage from Billy Grant (of Dearraindrop.) Another from 23 yr-old up-and-comer Krisjanis Katkins-Gorsline (watercolors and drawings a la Inka Essenhigh).
3. Jacob Ciocci of Paperrad and Slow Jams Band: 1/2 Hour of Power at Frisbee Art Fair in the Cavalier Hotel (the "anti-commercial" art fair that I had work in -- I didn't sell anything. but i guess that makes sense). Shit got crunk. Props to Anat Ebgi and Jen Denike for organizing Frisbee, and Ben Jones on the projections.
4. Herwig Weiser's installation in Lisa Ruyter’s shipping container on the beach for Art Basel. Weiser is a new media artist working in Cymatics and Ferrofluid. The result: two interactive stations resembling turntables where you could turn different knobs that morphed the ones and twos (respectively a circular pool of black fluid and a tondo landscape of obsidian magnetic shards). Bleeps and woozy sounds resulted as the dark fields mutated according to the combination of frequencies. There were also precise, diagramatic, color drawings. Blew my mind.
5. Gavin Brown Party at Angel Ultra Lounge -- our last effort of Friday evening to get into an exclusive party and the closest I have come to what a Studio 54 experience must have been like. Notable historical context: Gavin Brown is notorious for being arrested at his controversial 2004 show "Drunks vs. Stoned."
6. Chillin’ on the beach. Cloudless sky. Fresh Air. Blue Water. Walking along Ocean Drive you could hear Christmas music coming from beachfront stores. Weird.
7. Neil Farber (The Royal Art Lodge) drawings: 2 juicy rainbow drawings with hundreds of tiny heads. Taylor McKimens’s large irregularly shaped collage on panel. Eddie Martinez's drawings at NADA.
8. Dinner with Elizabeth Huey, Erik White (both NY painters) and Jaimie O' Shea (Editor of Juxtapoz) on Espanola Way.
9. Grand Opening Reception for french Gallerie Perrotin’s Miami branch: a 13,000 sq. ft, two floor factory space, still unfinished. Large enough for three concurrent solo shows and 2nd floor group show. The walls were whitewashed plywood. Stacks of drywall accented the yard out back where hour devours and a gourmet dinner were served as DJ's spun remixed oldies. Among the artists Perrotin represents: Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, Bernard Frize, Maurizio Cattelan, and Sophie Calle. Frize’s tight, patterned, meditative, B&W op paintings made my head hurt (good). Maybe it was all the free wine and mojitos (also good).
10. Scope “Culture on the Verge” party, rooftop of Towhouse Hotel. Enjoyed free refreshments and reading material courtesy of Red Stripe and The Fader. Amazing views of the South Beach architecture.
+++++
Rock Heals loves Seth’s work – check out a piece of his that showed up here in the past:
Jansen Acid Test Dictionary Painting
Posted by Rock Heals at 08:00 AM
December 08, 2005
Gwydion vs. The Sudoku At the End of Time
Gwydion Suilebhan
I've just ended a torturous, brief, passionate love affair, and I'm greatly relieved.
My now-ex-girlfriend's name is Sudoku, and if you've never met her yourself, I hope you never do. She's an international sensation, a mathematical genius with a pleasing symmetry. Almost everyone who meets her falls immediately and hopelessly in love.
She is, of course, a game. No, more than a game: a riddle, written in numbers, that only a strict application of numerical logic will solve.
Let me tell you more about her. (Actually, I'm going to let Wikipedia do it for me.) Sudoku is "a logic-based placement puzzle," the aim of which is "to enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids." (Think of a tic-tac-toe board with miniature tic-tac-toe boards inside of each square.) It's deceptively simple; you stare at it thinking you REALLY ought to be able to figure it out easily, but it just gets harder with every square you solve.
On two occasions last week I lost a couple of hours trying to solve a fiendish-level sudoku. But when I finally finished the second one, I felt... hollow. The numbers all started to look the same. I thought about how silly the completed grid was when set against the filled-out Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, which I finish most every week. There was no knowledge required to fill out the grid, just the ability to hold several possibilities in your mind at the same time. Should that square be a seven? Wait: if it's a seven, then the eight in the next row has to be wrong... which is right?
And that, perhaps, is the key to why sudoku's so popular. It's not about esoteric bits of knowledge, which are harder and harder in our increasingly knowledge-filled world to hang onto -- it's about large amounts of undifferentiated data, which we seem to have ample quantities of in the age of the internet. Sudoku requires the solver to sift through information, not to have any on hand.
If you'd like to sift through some yourself, I recommend the online version at the Times of London website. But if you're like me, you'll find yourself spending less time there after a while. I may be living in the age of information, but I don't have to like it. I'm built to store knowledge, not find it.
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:40 AM
August 17, 2005
Who is Kevin Thurston?
(thanks Ric)
Kevin's poetry, noted for its eccentricities of typography, language, and punctuation, usually seeks to convey a joyful, living awareness of sex and love. To date, Kevin has written three poems: Horny, Horny (1995), Tush Push (1997), and Dung Cock Grope (2001). Thurston is also an accomplished fibber and burglar, whose work includes stealing a watch through an ebay "pay-and-run" (in collaboration with Greg Marinaccio).
Kevin Thurston, 2002
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
May 18, 2005
Best of the Web: It's a Wookie, Wookie World
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
Every once in a while you come across a something on the webnet that brings all that is good in the world together in one bite-sized serving. Consume, pass along, return to the dreary. Devil Doll and Radiskull. Candystand. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. The Star Wars Kid.
But every once in a while something transcends the ephemera of this fleeting 72 dpi world. Something special that you hold close, even hoard. As I write, I fear the word will get out, bandwidth will be overdrawn, and it will disappear forever. I take this risk for you.
As you prepare to put a little Sith in your step, take the time to stop by the Planet of Wookies I carry in my heart. It starts subtle, but gets better and even better with age. (Without speakers, you are nothing.)
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:04 AM
April 20, 2005
Katamari Damacy: Tetris 2004?
Jamie Gaughran-Perez
So I'd never written an Amazon review -- but when I picked up Katamari Damacy late last year, I couldn't resist. So... here it is. Go get it. Now.
Addictive, deceptively simple, very well executed... Very basically put, you collect stuff by rolling over it with a sticky ball, but its amazing how gracefully perspective shifts as your katamari goes from 1 inch in size to 1 mile and from collecting shirt buttons to skyscrapers and bridges.
And if you thought "All Your Base Belongs To Us" was funny in any way, you'll really enjoy all the story interludes.
Be warned, the graphic approach is very very basic and will remind you of pixel art or C64 games at times -- this is no doubt completely intentional. But if you are looking for super-realistic graphics, don't come here.
Also in Week 6
I wasn't even on the clock... by D_, our paramedic in the field
Previously on Rock Heals
Week 5: Yankees In Last! (But so are the Sox) with a short play from Brian Calandra and a recipe
Week 4: Perdue, the Pope and Bellows. Oh my! with 911 Diaries, Mike Grau, and music from M_GP
Week 3 Waits Patiently for Spring Weather with a comic from John Shanchuk
Week 2 In the Time or Rock Heals with poetry from Justin Sirois; and
Week 1 Where it All Began with poetry from Mark Wallace
Posted by Rock Heals at 12:10 AM
