There’s this voice that has been haunting me since I was 10 or 11, whenever it was that I first saw Carrie. It’s Piper Laurie as Margaret White, pitched up and screeching through my mind on a loop.
“They’re all gonna laugh at you.”
“They’re all gonna laugh at you.”
“They’re all gonna laugh at you.”
Ad nauseam.
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Everything Is Festival is going on right now at Cinefamily and, as part of it, last night they screened Glow: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Of course, it sold out. We were able to catch the encore screening at 11 p.m. which may not have sold out, but was really full. Obviously, everyone still loves the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. I know I do. Fortunately, so does my boyfriend.
My dad was really into wrestling, both Olympic style and the professional stuff, so I watched a lot of it as a kid. Wrestlemania was a big event for us. I grew up knowing who all the wrestlers were, what their schtick was and everything. It wasn’t just the wrestling that captivated me. It was the spectacle. But, wrestling was almost always the boys’ arena.
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I can’t believe it’s been more than a decade since The Faint released Danse Macabre. This wasn’t the band’s first album, but it was definitely their landmark album. I was a resident DJ at Bang! here in Los Angeles back in 2001 and quickly became obsessed with playing so much of Danse Macabre. “Agenda Suicide” and “Glass Danse” were biggies, as was “Your Retro Career Has Melted.” “Let The Poison Spill from Your Throat” might have gotten some play too. Then there was the fantastic Thin White Duke Mix of “The Conductor” that was really popular at this electro party I did called Transmission.
True story: I randomly ended up DJing at The Faint’s stop at the Troubadour while they were touring with Danse Macabre. Somebody I had never met called me up that afternoon and asked if I would do it. Even weirder was that I was scheduled to interview them for Outburn magazine that same night. So, I ended up DJing the show and interviewing them. At that time, it was one of the most exciting work days I had ever had.
Turn-of-the-century flashbacks aside, this is a phenomenal album and one that rightly deserves an extra-special release. Go ahead and check out the free track available via the above widget. The remastered, deluxe edition comes out on October 30. The Thin White Duke mix of “The Conductor” is on the bonus disc, which makes this absolutely worth your while. Here’s the tracklisting, per a recent press release.
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Recently, I was invited to a screening of The Odd Life of Timothy Green at Disney’s studios. It took me a little while to get together everything I wanted to say about the movie. The following might contain spoilers, I can’t say for sure since I don’t really know what constitutes a spoiler.
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Tonight was a special night at Underground on account of it being the birthday of a good friend of mine. We’ve been friends for a long time, in fact, she was one of the less-than-20 people at my first DJ gig, so I wanted to play a particularly kick ass set. Maybe that happened. Check out the set list below the jump.
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Yesterday, I asked you to suggest some books for me to read and I got quite a few responses. Here’s everyone’s recommendations, culled from the Beatique comment section, Facebook and Twitter. I’m keeping track of who recommended what and you will all get a special shout out when the book is read.
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I’m almost done with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami, which I love and recommend to everyone ready for some heavy duty reading. In a matter of a day or two, I will be without extracurricular reading material. This is bad because I spend all day reading Internet stuff, comment sections included, and that can make me hate the world. I’m asking for your help before I start talking to myself about the decline of civility and spelling in the U.S.
Suggest a book for me to read in the comments. Any book. If I haven’t read it, I will hunt it down at the LA Public Library and read it. If I’ve already read it, I will go and read it again. I’ll write a book report or everything I read.
Here’s the criteria:
— Fiction will be read first because I deal with too much non-fiction for work.
— Any suggestions of 50 Shades of whatever will be ignored. I heard Gilbert Gottfried’s reading. That’s enough.
— Comic book suggestions are welcome, but I’m backed up on comics I’m reading. I typically read one book with pictures and one without pictures at the same time.
If you want an idea of my tastes, here’s a list of books I love.
— Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
— Catch-22
— The Handmaid’s Tale
— Pride & Prejudice
— The Picture of Dorian Gray
— Middlesex
— The Great Gatsby
There you go. Help out a bookworm today.
We’re still in the midst of a heat wave here in Los Angeles. Not to be all whiny L.A. or anything, but it’s so hot you can feel yourself walking through a thick, disgusting mass of summer air. Nightclubbing in this weather can be a chore, so Underground is busting out the ice cream this week. Really, we’ll have tasty treats on hand for free while supplies last, so get there early. If you want to come to the party, make sure you RSVP for free early entry/discount entry all night. You can do that by commenting on Underground’s site or leaving an RSVP on Facebook. If you have a birthday this week, let us know and we can set you up with an extra special treat.
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Cover of Sweater Girls Were Here. (Image courtesy of Sweater Girls)
My friend and fellow Underground DJ, Diana Meehan, is playing with her band Sweater Girls on Sunday at Part Time Punks. Joining them are Detective and Seapony. You should go.
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Self-promotion sucks. It’s also completely unavoidable if you ever plan on working freelance. Even if you’re a staffer somewhere, there are plenty of companies now who really expect you to be promoting your own work. Self-promotion is a necessary annoyance.
When I started writing professionally, print media dominated the web variety. Back then, the job of a freelance writer was simpler. You pitched. If your story was accepted, you wrote it, you did a basic edit, you turned it into your editor. Everything after that was out of your control. Whether or not people bought the magazine wasn’t your problem. You would never know with any sort of certainty how many people read your work. Your editors didn’t really have a solid answer for that and, in a way it didn’t matter.
Web is a completely different beast. The editors who assign you stories know exactly how many people are reading your work. The more of an audience you can bring with you to every assignment, the more valuable you are as a freelancer. In that respect, writing for the web is more like working in TV. Web has pageviews, TV has ratings, both provide a pretty good estimate of how much of an audience you actually have. This shift doesn’t just affect writers. Visual artists, musicians, essentially everyone in a creative field, has to do the same thing. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, or a bad thing, it’s just the new model. Get used to it.
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