A Good Name for a Documentary Film, a Bad Name for a Potential Theme Park

Laborland

For the last several months, my friends Dave and Tim and a few close friends and colleagues have been working on a documentary film about immigrant labor. They've been up and down California shooting interviews, protests, you name it. I'm told they have about 60 hours of footage thus far.

I knew all that, yet I had no idea of the massive scope of this project. Tim's just cut together a first trailer of the film, which will be called Laborland, and these guys have done incredible work. I'm floored. I can't wait to see this thing all put together. I figured it would be interesting, because I've met all the filmmakers and they're a smart bunch, but this looks like a much more compelling, emotional journey than I had imagined. I've been hanging out with these guys sporadically during the production thus far, but didn't realize how busy they had been putting all this together.

Anyway, check out this trailer and you tell me if this isn't the sort of movie you'd want to watch. I'll try to keep my scant few readers updated as the film edges ever closer to completion.



The Ventriloquists

I've been meaning to update everyone about this dynamite local rock/ska/funk/hip-hop combo for some time now. (Full disclosure: They are my friends.) I went to see the Ventriloquists a few weeks back at the Rainbow Room on Sunset, where they played in this peculiar upstairs attic-type performance space.

I've never seen a show in a room quite like this one. It was like a normal, albeit kind of small, bar, with some tables and booths arranged against the walls. But the stage was actually in a separate room, set 6 or so feet below the bar area. I ended up sitting on the steps going down to be able to actually see the band. It sounds awkward, and it was for a minute, but the band is so high-energy, they managed to get the crowd into it regardless of the design flaws.

I was thinking, while up there, about whether any interesting moments in rock history went down in that room. Back in the '60s and '70s, before the Sunset Strip was a theme park (one with homeless guys and junkies), the Rainbow Room was a focal point of the (awesome) local rock scene.

Who knows the people that might have passed through that tiny room? What was its original function? Practice space? Green room? Second stage? Coat check? I have no idea.

Anyway, the band! I've always thought they were funny and good musicians, but these guys have really progressed since their formation a few years ago. For the first time, they seemed to play as a cohesive unit, not to mention their newfound enthusiasm for stretching out songs with improvisation. (These are Phish-esque 20 minute jams or anything, but the songs were kind of opened up and explored in a looser way than I'd heard before.)

It's strange and cool to hear a band actually progress like this. I'm unaccustomed to getting on board a group's bandwagon early enough to hear these sorts of changes. (If the Ventriloquists ever take off, I'm going to have massive Music Nerd points for a while, until they have been successful for a little while and are therefore totally uncool. Then I'll be right back in Douchetown where I started...)



Check out the Ventriloquists on MySpace here. (I highly highly recommend the song "PSA 13.")And purchase their debut album, Safety Meeting while you're over there. Go on. Do it. Do it. Dooooooooo it...

Arec Bardrin

So, Kim Jong Il has gone ahead and done the thing he promises not to do, he has made some nuclear weapons. Naturally, we're shocked. I mean, he said he wanted to make nuclear weapons, and we specifically said not to! Doesn't he listen?

I mean, our President declared his country evil, along with two other countries. One of those other countries has nuclear weapons, and the other doesn't. Then we went and laid waste to the country that didn't have the weapons, turning it into an unceasing hell on earth. Also, we refused to talk to him. And we tied up all of our armed forces in the middle of a chaotic desert nation. And he somehow bizarrely took that as an impetus to try and get nuclear weapons. What a nutjob!

Anyway, I think Alec Baldwin and the other members of the Film Actors Guild ought to get over there right away and set this whole thing right. They can have some kind of star-studded international peace effort. It certainly hasn't been tried before!

I guess Alec's busy these days, what with kicking ass in The Departed and starring in the new sitcom "30 Rock" and writing sarcastic rants on Huffington Post. It's a fairly amusing post, but the headline is woefully miscalculated - "The Embarrassed Republicans."

Alec...Can I call you Alec? These Republicans are incapable of embarrassment. You could walk in on them violently fucking your cat on your bed and they would respond that once, in 1976, a Democratic city councilman from Bozeman, Montana was alleged to have sexually molested a calico kitten with a pair of tongs, some latex gloves, a broken Heineken bottle, a large container of bacon grease and a spatula.

At this point, there is absolutely nothing you could reveal about them that would be surprising or humiliating in any way. It is now well-documented that Republicans in the House and Senate are torture-loving racist hypocritical warmongers openly calling for bribes when they're not busy spying on their own citizenry, raiding the treasury, racketeering and molesting their underage pages. I mean...what more could you even begin to add on top of that?

I guess it hasn't (yet) come out that any members of the House Ethics Committee regularly ingest human flesh. So that's something.

Anyway, I agree with most of the Eldest of the Baldwins' points, but that headline is just plain misleading.

My Work Has Been Described as Distinctly Vaginal

Someone made it to my blog by performing this search today.

That's right - someone Googled "vaginal wetness constant." And it brought them to my blog. I'm so proud.

The post in question discussed a remarkable new invention, Absorbshun, that actually dries out overly-moist vaginas! It's a miracle!

By the way, if you were the reader who got here via that query, and if you're a woman, feel free to drop me a line. With a photo attached. I think I may be able to help you out...