March 2008

Indie rock hottie Liz Phair has joined a new record label and is preparing to re-release her 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville.  She’s signed up with ATO Records (Dave Matthews’ record label) who will be releasing a new package that includes four previously unreleased songs and a DVD containing Guyville Redux, a documentary about the making of the album.

Exile in Guyville is a classic album.  One of my favorites from the 90s.  So it will be nice to see it get an update, and I’m definitely jacked about seeing a documentary about it.  Hell, I’m pretty happy to see anything with Liz in it…

Liz Phair - Flower

The new package of Exile in Guyville is due June 24th

via Billboard

Let me tell you a story.  It’s a typical boy meets girl story.  Well, it’s a typical boy meets girl, joins a band with girl, marries girl, girl forms side band with other boy, boy and girl get divorced, girl and other boy get married story.  Got that?

The full story goes something like this:  In 1991 Robert Schneider was introduced to Hillarie Sidney through mutual friend Jim McIntyre.  Sidney and McIntyre were in a band, and soon asked Schneider to join.  That band became The Apples in Stereo.  As the band grew closer together so did Schneider and Sidney.  Eventually they got married and had a kid.  Apparently things didn’t go so well however, as by 2004 the couple divorced. Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, summer. Beaches, Baseball, and Blockbusters. With the summer movie season fast approaching…
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A few new pics from Iron Man are out, and they finally give us a glimpse of the showdown between Iron Man and his nemesis, Iron Monger.  Iron Monger looks a lot like the original Iron Man suit that Tony Stark builds.  Since I’m not a big fan of the Iron Man comics, I have no idea if that’s what it’s supposed to look like or not.  However I do think it’s pretty cool to have the new Iron Man fight the old Iron Man, so I’m going to go with it.

As always click for full-sized goodness.

A few more pics from the upcoming Speed Racer movie have surfaced, and while there’s nothing exactly unexpected, it’s nice to see some more of the film’s distinctive visuals.

Along with the photos comes some news about the racing sequences in the film. Muhen Leo, an effects supervisor on the movie, says:

You’ve heard of kung-fu–and there’s plenty of it in Speed Racer–but how about car-fu? “[The brothers] realized that real racing wasn’t what they were after. So the idea of cars fighting one another came about early on. The idea is that drivers have such elaborate control over the cars that they could do kicks and spins and hit each other.

Um, what? Car-fu? Easy there guys. The trailers and photos have me completely hooked. Don’t go gettin’ all crazy on me now.

Now here are the pics. As always, click for the full-sized versions.

Speed Racer is due out on May 9th.

All of the McDonalds family is in mourning after the death of one of their beloved visionaries. Herb Peterson, the man who invented McDonalds’ most popular breakfast sandwich, the Egg McMuffin, died on Tueday at age 89.

The rebellious Peterson created the Egg McMuffin at a time when McDonalds didn’t even serve breakfast. While McDonalds president Ray Kroc liked the idea, Peterson was reprimanded for serving breakfast behind the company’s back. That’s the sort of thanks he got for creating the idea that now accounts for at least %20 of McDonalds’ sales.

Now, personally I hate the Egg McMuffin. If I’m going to eat breakfast at McDonalds it’s probably going to be the artery-clogging yumminess that is the Sausage McGriddle. That being said, I salute you Mr. Peterson, for giving us overeaters a morning outlet for our compulsive eating!

via CNN

If you haven’t already seen the Big Dog Robot video that’s been circulating teh intrawebs take a second to watch it:

Pretty amazing/scary/incredible/creepy, isn’t it? Kind of makes you want to welcome our robot dog masters, doesn’t it? Well it turns out a lot of work went into it, and the early versions were slightly less successful:

The good folks over at SlashFilm have turned up a bunch of new photos from the forthcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Nothing terribly earth shattering, but interesting nonetheless. overall it looks like the movie is going to look just like an Indiana Jones movie. That may sound obvious, but it’s still kind of comforting.

Click on the pictures for the full-sized joints

It seems that the fine folks at Dr. Pepper are as sick of waiting for Axl Rose to release Chinese Democracy as everyone else is. They’re offering a free Dr. Pepper to everyone in America if the album comes out in 2008. Well, almost everyone. Apparently Slash and Buckethead don’t get one. Something tells me they won’t mind…

Dr. Pepper’s statement says:

“It took a little patience to perfect Dr Pepper’s special mix of 23 ingredients, which our fans have come to know and love,” Dr Pepper director of marketing Jaxie Alt says. “So we completely understand and empathize with Axl’s quest for perfection — for something more than the average album. We know once it’s released, people will refer to it as ‘Dr Pepper for the ears’ because it will be such a refreshing blend of rich, bold sounds – an instant classic.”

They also setup a blog to push the promotion. Someone claiming to be Axl posted a comment on the blog, saying he appreciates the support and that he’ll share his Dr. Pepper with Buckethead.

Now, my bullshit detector is going off here, so this could all be completely fake. Take it all with a grain of salt. But, if it is BS, they managed to fool Billboard, Pitchfork, and NME.

UPDATE:Axl released a statement on the GNR website thanking Dr Pepper. Maybe this is real…

The day we’ve been waiting for since last year week is finally here. The Raconteurs have finally released Consolers of the Lonely, after months days of anticipation.

So far I have to say I love absolutely everything about this album. I love the band’s commitment to getting it out into fans’ hands as quickly as possible. I love the fact that it’s available in a ton of different formats. I love the first half of the album (though to be fair, that’s all I’ve heard). And I love this video, for the first single, “Salute Your Solution”. It’s made up of over 2,500 still photos.

Ok, enough is enough, go buy Consolers Of The Lonely!