Presenting my iJack

Howdy folks!

As you know I love music, and I love Halloween. This year I really needed something extra creepy and fun to listen to all my favorite scary movie scores on...so I came up with the "iJack".




Basically I gutted a pumpkin and turned it into an iPod dock. So you "feed" your Ipod to it buy placing it in his mouth, then you can use the remote control to play your music. He's geared with internal speakers and lit with orange LED's. As soon as I get some sort of video camera I'll try and upload a video so you guys know it really works and it's not just a pumpkin full of electronicy looking parts.

Here are a few more photos of the iJack.




Happy Halloween!
alternately you can view these on my flickr stream (I just don't like flickr that much, but here's a link anyway: Flickr)

Halloween Special!

Howdy folks!

It wouldn't be Halloween without scary movies, and it sure as hell wouldn't be Halloween without another Drive-In Speakerbox Halloween Special! We had a fantastic time this year and as always, weren't able to squeeze it all in. More for next year! We've got a 3 hour show lined up for your listening terror, so click this baby and put on your diapers and clutch that barf bag, cause something is gonna spew...and it might be YOU!

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PLAYLIST
Dimitri Tiomkin - Dial M for Murder (1954)
Harry Manfredini - House II: The Second Story - (1987)
Frank Skinner - Son of Frankenstein - (1939)
Mark Isham - The Hitcher - (1986)
Unknown - Mickey Mouse in Haunted House - (1929)
Ennio Morricone - Spasmo - (1974)
Ron Grainer - The Omega Man - (1971)
George Fenton - The Company of Wolves - (1984)
John Carpenter - Halloween: 30th Anniversary Box Set & Halloween III - Season Of The Witch (1978 - 1982)
Harry Manfredini - Swamp Thing (1982)
Gene Page - Blacula - (1972)
Chuck Chino - Chopping Mall - (1986)
Walt Disney - Haunted Mansion 30th Anniversary
Bump In The Night from Ernest Scared Stupid - (1991)
Bette Middler - Hocus Pocus (1993)
Jerry Goldsmith - The 'Burbs - (1989)
Christopher Young - Hellraiser - (1987)
Thomas Newman - The Lost Boys - (1987)

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Thrills! Chill! Madness inducing audio!

We interrupt this blog to bring you a special news bulletin

Reports from Washington have warned us of an approaching radio program that could send our community into fits of fear induced insanity! Lock your doors! Hide your children! Wear some diapers! At its current speed, scientists predict it could be in your area on MONDAY OCTOBER 26th AT 8PM - 10PM! Research also supports that listening to the full 2 hours could melt your brain!

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

BEWARE! It's coming, and cannot be stopped!

Tropic Thunder, despite controversy, is still retarded.

Howdy folks,

Saw me some Tropic Thunder this weekend and shoooo-weee was that a let down. It's a bummer how the sum is way way lower than it's parts. There's a good formula for a movie somewhere in here....I mean it worked for Three Amigos. Take a handful of talented actors, put them in a comedy about being actors in a situation that is like a movie but "real" and watch the calamity. The roll call was even pretty decent, and the acting jobs not completely terrible. Robert Downey Jr, Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte...all people I really enjoy watching on screen. Did I enjoy watching them this time? Not so much...and I can't really tell you why exactly.

The first 15-20 minutes were pretty damn promising, and I was getting my hopes up right at the start with the series of fake commercials and movie trailers making cracks on the state of Hollywood these days. Though, once that was over, things fell right back into the run-of-the-mill brand of humor that Stiller seems so bent on making. (Despite being way better at darker subject matter) Hell, he even threw a small creature. He's always throwing some helpless living thing that ends up being not so helpless and attacking him be it a monkey, small dog, or in this case baby.

For a long time I've wanted to just sit around making effigies of Ben Stiller and spend my weekends thinking of new ways to maim them...but I try to given him some slack and remember Cable Guy and Permanent Midnight. Why doesn't he make more movies like these? Perhaps it's easier to blow shit up, make goofy faces, make Jack Black run around naked screaming, act retarded (literally), and have harmless things become really dangerous. I guess that's what we all enjoy seeing over and over and over again anyway...

The movie only had me laughing during a few points, but the pyro and action FX were actually pretty fun to watch and the visual aesthetic was probably a huge saving grace for me. Also, I was fairly impressed at the performance of Jay Baruchel, who totally nailed the token nerdy guy in every war movie. Nick Nolte and Robert Downey Jr. carried this film on their backs as far as I'm concerned, and Tom Cruises appearance, whilst funny the first two times, became very old and eventually god awful during the end credits. However, I still feel that it was exactly the right move for him to maintain a career in Hollywood. Everyone likes someone that can laugh at themselves. Especially when they are bat shit insane.

I'm sure it will make a bunch of money, cause there are enough idiots in this world that instead of just putting in their special edition DVD's of "There's something about Mary", "Dodgeball", "Zoolander" or any other Ben Stiller churn out...they'll go see this one cause stuff blows up.


Also, be sure to download the podcast of Monday's show which includes the audio review of Tropic Thunder!
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Clone Wars Review

Howdy Folks,

This week I went and saw Clone Wars. Why you ask? I really don't know actually. I think that because I saw the original trilogy in my youth and it made such an impression on my development as a person, that I now have some obscene blood pact with George Lucas, despite wanting to kick his fat head and tumor neck with spiked boots. Yet I continue to consume each piece of garbage he peddles off as further additions to "his vision". This latest installment angers me not because it was completely unwatchable, because it wasn't...but more because it could have been the saving grace of this franchise instead of its death rattle.

Conceptually it seemed like a good idea. Why not make a CGI Star Wars movie, since 80% of the last one was CGI anyway? Seemed like a sound plan to me, and you can suspend my disbelief longer because the CGI is supposed to look animated and not just half-assed realism pawned off by Lucas and "his visions". However Lucas's visions have been reduced to simple dollar signs hovering over the heads of children like some perverted expansion pack of "The Sims", and Clone Wars is nothing more than a platform for more merchandise and product tie ins aimed at over privileged brats. The part that makes me guffaw the most is the fact that this plan could still work and Lucas doesn't even see the potential! These brats that are buying these crappy new toys just so happen to be the sons and daughters of geeky fan boys that are desperately wishing for a HALFWAY decent installment into the Star Wars universe. These are the folks buying the toys anyway, so if we actually loved the movie too, we'd be buying even more of this mass produced garbage. Hell, these same people still pay hefty sums for the ancient junk from the first series.

Toys and product tie ins aside, the movie was pretty bland over all. The voice acting was terrible (save for Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, and Sam Jackson) and I almost left the theater two minutes in when the narrator came on and sounded like a commercial for a new Buzz Lightyear doll. Don't even get me started on Ashley Eckstein "performance" as Ahsoka Tano, whose character was nothing more than an excuse to have a popular pre-teen celeb spout on about baby poop jokes for the young Hutt and giving cutesy nick names to sacred things such as "Skyguy (aka Skywalker)" and "R-Twoie (aka R-2D2)". Her character alone is enough to make you want to shove a lightsaber where the sun don't shine and hope you live through it to get radiation cancer from the whole experience. That would still be more pleasant.

This movie should have been great. Art direction was spot on, some of the visuals were just fantastic...but the execution was poor and it was as if they hadn't referred to any of the other movies before making this one. If you like lasers going "BEW BEW BEW" and baby CGI creatures coo'ing and burping, then this is going to blow your mind.