Forest Fire

FF ONLINE!

2009-11-23T04:37:00.000-08:00

WE'VE MOVED! UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS

Late, but no less relevant, Announcement

2009-06-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

Forest Fire Volume 4 Issue 1 can be found in many UCI publication receptacles throughout its campus. Read it and tell us how you like it.

Our "2nd issue" will be distributed both during the summer and during the first weeks of the coming Fall quarter. Look out for it online soon. All that needs done is the layout and some final editing (Abe has graciously done the major revisions: I have only to look over it), then it's off to the printers.

Although Forest Fire is no longer accepting submissions for V4I2, in a couple of months, Forest Fire will be asking for contributions to Volume 5 Issue 1. If you want to contribute to that issue, give us an email and we'll respond positively.

Also, look for our website in the coming months.

A big thanks to all those who contributed to, and continued to support, Forest Fire this past year. Hopefully, the coming year will hold Forest Fire to its claim of being a "quarterly" magazine.

-Jonathan

The State of Forest Fire

2009-03-09T16:38:00.001-07:00

Though the blog may indicate it, Forest Fire is far from inactive. Unfortunately none of us has made the effort to consistently update the blog with new online content, and I believe that most of us consider the blog a lost cause. This may partly be due to the fact that the majority of the masthead was off gallivanting in Europe during the fall quarter and was too busy enjoying the good life to give much care to the state of things. Another reason may be the limited functionality (or our ignorance) of the blogger template to support online versions of the magazine.

But we're all back now busily working on the winter print issue and--which segues nicely to my next point--a permanent, multi-purpose website, on which we hope to host not only a PDF version of the magazine, but also a HTML, text-and-image version of the print content. In addition to this main function, I envision (Forest Fire envisions a lot and too much) the website as a sort of small-time blog, for which members of the staff will write an entry or two every week or so. The casual reader will also have a space to comment on blog posts and on the content of the magazine itself. This is in the works: meaning, we hope to get one up during spring quarter of this academic year.

We also want to broaden our horizons a bit from merely publishing a magazine (however labored over it is--and it is). We want to host release parties--and I mean bona fide release parties with DJ sets or bands and drinks and such--and screenings (particularly a documentary on Irvine Meadows West, a mobilehome and trailer community that is now a often vacant parking lot). Again, more envisioning.

Our visions need someone to prod them into existence. If you're interested in working with me and Abe in promotion and organization of Forest Fire, please contact us by email. An incentive should be our relative coolness and open company, but maybe that's not much of an incentive for the amount of work you'll probably have to put in. Consider it then a labor of charity.

I believes that just about wraps it up.

The issue should hit UCI (alternative) publication racks the first weeks of spring quarter. Look for it and give us an email expressing your opinion.

5 Reasons You Need to Be At An Acrobatics Everyday Show This Fall

2008-10-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

Hope everybody had a fantastic and relaxing Summer Break! Now that everybody has settled into the Fall Quarter, Forest Fire is here to shake you out of the daily grind. There have been too many amazing events in Orange County, to let our blog posting and calendar lasped. The Forest Fire blog staff is here to keep you updated on the coolest events around UCI and Orange County.

Acrobatics Everyday is UCI organization created by Sam Farzin to bring live performances to UCI. Last Saturday night Acrobatics Everyday presented Ponytail @ Phoneix Grill. Unfornatuely I was not there. I have thought of five reasons why you need to be at every Acrobatics Everyday show this Fall, so I will remeber not to miss another show.

1. All Ages - Every Acrobatics Everyday show is all ages. I only know of couple of all ages venues in Orange County. Waiting till your 21 to you get see all your favorite bands at best venues can seem like eons, Arcrobatics Everyday shows can lessen your pain.

2. Eclectic Lineup - What kind of music do you like? From the world music of Chirgilchin to dance music of Dan Deacon to the pop the Mae Shi to the folk of PWRFL Power, Acrobatics Everyday has you covered.

3. Value - The shows are in your backyard, right here on UCI campus. No longer do you need to have debates with your friends about who is driving up to LA. Just walk out of your dorm and across campus. The majority of Acrobatics Everyday shows have been $10 dollars. No longer do you need to shell out an extra $20 for venue fees and Ticketmaster charges.

4. A Unique Experience - From intimate acoustic sets in Aldrich Park, to renegade performances on roof of the parking structures, Acrobatics Everyday puts on shows you will not see anywhere else. Dan Deacon had listeners running around the venue like it was there twelfth birthday party. After another show members of Mae Shi played a game of tag football.

5. New Friends - I don't know where else at UCI you going to meet such chill/amazing/beautiful/fun/creative people all in one place.

The next Acrobatics Everyday show is Q&A session with musician Ian McKaye on Tuesday, October 21, 7:30pm @ Humanites Hall 178 $5. For more information about upcoming Acrobatics Everyday shows visit their website. And always keep your eyes peeled on the Forest Fire Calendar.

HARD Summer Festival 7/19/2008

2008-07-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know how almost let this slip past, but a late notice is better than never.

On July 19,2008 Dim Mak, Urb Magazine, and Indie 103.1 are throwing festival at the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles. The HARD Summer Festival features N.E.R.D., MSTRKRFT, Spank Rock, Kid Sister, A-Trak, and Steve Aoki. $50.

San Diego Street Scene 2008

2008-06-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Anybody down for a road trip?

This year San Diego Street Scene is returning to the its street location after several years in at Qualcomm stadium, September 19 and 20.

This year's lineup includes to many amazing bands to mention, including Beck, The National, and Hot Chip to name a few. You're better off just viewing the full lineup here.

It's great opportunity to see the artists that you missed at Coachella due to a conflict, or if you where too cheap to buy tickets to see them when they played at the Bowl.

Sunset Junction 2008

2008-06-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

The review of my experience at Sunset Junction Street Festival 2007 would be titled "Fear in Loathing in LA." You will have to use your imagination, because I can't really remember.

Lineup for Sunset Junction Street Festival 2008
Saturday, August August 23, 2008: Broken Social Scene + Cold War Kids
Sunday, August August 24, 2008: !!! (Chk Chk Chk) + Black Keys
Plus great local bands: Henry Clay People, Gram Rabbit, Happy Hollows and Castledoors.

Despite the heat, crowd, and tacky carnival amtosphere, for only $30 ($15 per day), this festival is absolutely mandatory! Go green, ride the Metro. See you there.

New blog features

2008-05-23T17:54:00.001-07:00

On the left column, you will see a calendar for upcoming local shows/events and a Google Map bookmarked with all the places we've featured on our magazine and other places we've visited in the past year. We have everything from Burmese food in San Francisco to the very awesome Spoonbill & Sugartown bookstore in Brooklyn listed.

Nature As Song

2008-05-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

The environmentalist/nature composer John Luther Adams is much in tune with the natural world. His life in Alaska led him to create a sound-art instillation in which live nature dictates musical tones and ambient lighting within a room called "The Place Where You Go to Listen." Adams' necessary message is not the first to be recognized: the human connection with nature is what life is about and yet the deterioration of it will be the greatest blow to humanity.

Adams speaks of his infinite passion in Song of the Earth featured in The New Yorker:

“My music is going inexorably from being about place to becoming place,” Adams said of his installation. “I have a vivid memory of flying out of Alaska early one morning on my way to Oberlin, where I taught for a couple of fall semesters. It was a glorious early-fall day. Winter was coming in. I love winter, and I didn’t want to go. As we crested the central peaks of the Alaska Range, I looked down at Mt. Hayes, and all at once I was overcome by the intense love that I have for this place—an almost erotic feeling about those mountains. Over the next fifteen minutes, I found myself furiously sketching, and when I came up for air I realized, There it is. I knew that I wanted to hear the unheard, that I wanted to somehow transpose the music that is just beyond the reach of our ears into audible vibrations. I knew that it had to be its own space. And I knew that it had to be real—that I couldn’t fake this, that nothing could be recorded. It had to have the ring of truth."

Read the rest of Song of the Earth here.

Port O'Brien @ Fingerprints May.12.08

2008-05-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

I slogged through rush hour traffic from Irvine to Long Beach to catch Port O'Brien playing at Fingerprints Record Store to celebrate the All We Could Do is Sing, their first LP self-released, May 13. Port O'Brien draw their sound from a blend of current indie pop rock groups, like Arcade Fire, combined with 1970's folk rock groups, like Neil Young. It is the perfect sound to wake up to in the morning or relax to on lazy afternoon. Although they are California natives, lead vocalist and guitarist, Van Piersalowski pens most of his songs about spending many months on a commercial salmon fishing boat in Alaska. Despite the seemingly lonely themes, Port O'Brien make pop songs encourage movement.

While I had my apprehension, as Fingerprints is great venue for intimate acoustic performance, the CD aisles do not lend themselves to dancing. The crowd was mostly hipsters of the mountain man variety with flannel and long beards. Port O'Brien, with two guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, banjo player just barely fit on to the stage. Port O'Brien began their set with Van on acoustic guitar as they played through their folk rock ballads, like "Fisherman's Son." Between songs Van described the surprisingly humorous situations that could arise on a commercial fishing boat. A few in the crowd may have bobbed their head or tapped their foot, but most were content to stand with their arms crossed. Then in move similar to Dylan at Newport, Van put plugged in his electric guitar and declared they were going to rock out. The whole stage shook beneath there feet as they danced very carefully enough to prevent from knocking any equipment over. For their finale Port O'Brien pulled the crowd closer to the stage, passed out pots and pans and taught the audience the shouting chorus, then launched into their hit "I Woke Up Today." The stoic crowd abruptly changed as everybody was shouting, banging on pots, and dancing. Any time you leave show with big grin and some new friends, it was damn good time.

Video, MP3 and Pics of Port O'Brien from Stereogum here and here.

Forest Fire - Volume 3, Issue 2 available in print

2008-04-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Look for it in alternative media racks around the UCI campus.

"The City As it Should Be": Links and Information

2008-04-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here are some excellent resources for those who wish to pursue further the New Urbanist movement:

Congress for the New Urbanism Main Site:
http://www.cnu.org/

Santa Ana Renaissance Specific Plan Site:
http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/pba/planning/Renaissance_Specific_Plan.asp

GOOD Magazine: Introduction to Five Part Series on Skid Row:
http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/on_skid_row_introduction

If you have access to JSTOR (UCI students have it), I suggest keyword, 'new urbanism,' for great articles on modern urbanism.

Forest Fire - Vol. 3 / Issue 2 available online!

2008-04-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

New issue is available online at http://www.badongo.com/file/8922998. Print edition will be available during Week 4.

West Indian Girl @ the Troubadour Feb.21.08

2008-02-26T19:21:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, during a rainy night hosted by KCRW, West Indian Girl preformed songs from their sophomore album 4th and Wall. Though their roots may be in Los Angeles, WIG goes back to the psychedelic San Francisco days of the 60s.
Presentation is what made WIG so interesting to watch live. The diverse mix of vocals and beats were paired well with a moving pictorial screen in the background. Each song, whether it was about the surf or a lover, had unique visual imagery to back it. The lyrics were not memorable, though the air each song emitted was wildly strong and distinct. I became mesmerized by the screen as if under a spell, for I forgot to look at the band most of the time. But to do without the dreamy visual effects would have put WIG back amongst the rest of the indistinct LA bands. The imagery exemplified my mind’s willingness to get lost in each song; I felt liberated in an open field- total freedom and happiness. It is no conundrum why critics have compared their musical effects to that of the acid trips of the sixties. The band even shares their name with a brand of acid. Francis Ten, one member of WIG, denies having named it after the fact. Their songs do make you want to release everything bogged down in your mind. Catchy, kitschy and more than a bit poppy, WIG surprisingly allows you to indulge in their sounds while still maintaining your good melodious taste. On their website, Francis Ten explains, “It’s about finding the best thing in life, be it a wave or a state of mind or a perfect escape.” Free mentality composes West Indian Girl.
Here are some lyrics from What Are You Afraid Of that exemplify the liberation emitted by their songs.

What are you afraid of?
All the years fade away
What are you made of?
From the ties that hold us down
What are you fighting for?
To feel them all
What are you dying for?
To be free

Who tonight will change your life
To jump on a plane and land a
Thousand miles away
Just to see what we came to be

The Korean Sartorialist

2008-02-20T00:23:00.000-08:00

Love clothes and your boyhood. Fashion from Seoul.
Reproduced from Mr. Kim

P.S. We could reproduce this viral marketing scheme with flyers of our own :)

So L.A.

2008-02-12T00:22:00.001-08:00

The Philippians’ sampling of hip-hop influences, moody ambient sounds, and soft vocals mimic a drive through L.A.’s hybrid urban landscape, moodily loathing our history of boosterism, while stuck in the daily freeway commute that culturally defines the city’s lifelines.

Though I haven’t bought the full album yet—it’s hard to come by in Orange County!—I’ve found any reason to play and play and play the four free tracks. Each song progresses and flows into one another like an all too short road trip, sampling Pink Martini’s "Je ne veux pas travailler" on “Tin Foil Fish” and rap/hip-hop sample on “Third Time Out.”

Still, the electronica repeats just enough to categorize and maintain musical coherency. Otherwise, various samplings make Goodnite Life Ratatat’s electronic counterpart, shifting beats, tones and styles. Add a cool ambiance and lyrical nostalgia à la RJD2’s “Making Days Longer” and voila, “Three Heart Machine.”

New York doesn’t make music like this.

The Philippians, Goodnite Life

Bonnaroo 2008

2008-02-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

For the east coast festival goers, the 08 lineup has been released!

Pearl Jam
Metallica
Jack Johnson
Kanye West
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Phil Lesh & Friends
My Morning Jacket
The Allman Brothers Band
The Raconteurs
Willie Nelson
Death Cab for Cutie
B.B. King
Sigur Ros
Levon Helm and the Ramble on the Road
Ben Folds
O.A.R.
The Bluegrass Allstars Feat. Luke Bulla, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Bryan Sutton
M.I.A.
Umphrey’s McGee
Iron & Wine
Yonder Mountain String Band
Swell Season
Talib Kweli
Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi’s Soul Stew Revival
Gogol Bordello
Broken Social Scene
Robert Randolph’s Revival
Rilo Kiley
Mastodon
Lupe Fiasco
Against Me!
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
Pat Green
Ozomatli
Tegan & Sara
Solomon Burke
Drive-By Truckers
!!!
The Avett Brothers
Israel Vibration
Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck
Phil Lesh / Larry Campbell / Jackie Greene
Aimee Mann
Ladytron
The Fiery Furnaces
Orchestra Baobab
Ghostland Observatory
Jose Gonzalez
Dark Star Orchestra
Minus the Bear
Donavon Frankenreiter
Lez Zeppelin
State Radio
Battles
Jakob Dylan
Two Gallants
The Sword
Vampire Weekend
Little Feat
Nicole Atkins
The Felice Brothers
Mason Jennings
MGMT
The Lee Boys
Black Kids
Serena Ryder
Steel Train
Grupo Fantasma
Back Door Slam

Bonnaroo Comedy:
Bonnaroo Late Night Chat About with David Cross
Janeane Garofalo
Zach Galifianakis
Jim Norton
Brian Posehn
Mike Birbiglia
John Mulaney
Michelle Buteau

Only the Good Things

2008-01-28T16:36:00.001-08:00

Their single "Oxford Comma" has been circulating around the blog-o-sphere the past couple of weeks. I haven't had a chance to listen to the whole album yet, but you can! Check out the full album here ---------------------------------------------.

EDIT: While I appreciate Justin's generosity and while not all of us at Forest Fire are against piracy, we're not an MP3 site, so I took down the link. Sorry, guys. If you really want it, the album's not too hard to find online. - Abe

Coachella '08: Parade of the Letdowns.

2008-01-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

Roger Waters (presenting Dark Side of the Moon)
Raconteurs
The Verve
Jack Johnson
Kraftwerk
Portishead
Death Cab for Cutie
My Morning Jacket
Love and Rockets
Justice
M.I.A.
The Breeders
Rilo Kiley
Sasha & Digweed
Café Tacuba
Fatboy Slim
Spritualized
Tegan and Sara
Madness
The National
Animal Collective
Mum
Pendulum
Sharon Jones
Stars
Battles
Aesop Rock
Midnight Juggernauts
Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Spank Rock
Minus the Bear
Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
Diplo
Adam Freeland
Santogold
Vampire Weekend
Dan Deacon
Hot Chip
Cold War Kids
Stephen Malkmus
Gogol Bordello
Chromeo
Metric
Danny Tenaglia
Booka Shade
Murs
Cool Kids
Sia
Les Savy Fav
Holy Fuck
Black Kids
Black Mountain
Man Man
I'm from Barcelona
Kid Sister
The Horrors
Austin TV
Shout Out Louds
Luckyiam
Autolux
Modeselektor
The Bees
Professor Murder
Cut Copy
Busy P
VHS or Beta

And those are the major acts, kids. Headliners are Jack Johnson, Portishead and Roger Waters? Really now? We have Radiohead and MBV about to do concerts and you're telling me Goldenvoice can't come up with a better lineup? This is a major disappointment.*

Here's to hoping some last-minute additions are made. There's still 94 days...right guys?

*Please keep in mind that many of these bands are quite good, but really, spending the money to go to Coachella and then toiling in the weather to go see these bands doesn't seem worth it, I'd rather catch them at a club.

Get the new issue here!

2008-01-16T03:19:00.000-08:00

Vol.3/Issue 1 is on its way to our printers now. Look for it on campus at the beginning of Week 3. But if you don't want to wait, just download the issue here. Any suggestions for a better file host?

Enjoy!

Larry & Obama

2008-01-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

Obama just won the Iowa caucuses, and I'm pretty sure he's going to take the New Hampshire one as well. From the Republican side McCain seems to have N.H. on lock-down!

Guess who this Obama endorsing celebrity is:

"Another student asked him what he thought Obama's chances were. He answered with his signature "Pre-tty, pre-tty good," leading to a raucous outburst."

Cheers!

Days 2 and 3: Dadaists and Scientologists

2007-12-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

The weather in New York right now is cold and biting. Everyday, we bundle up in sweaters and coats, and still, the cold can be painful and overwhelming. The snow, however, is beautiful, and watching snow fall is something I don't get to see at all in Orange County.

Sunday morning, we visited the Guggenheim in the Upper East Side to check out the Richard Prince exhibit. Prince is an artist who's most famous for taking photographs of advertisements and taking them out of context to show how advertisements idealize consumerism and lure us into believing that we too can be beautiful and bourgeois if we buy a piece of furniture or jewelry. With all mention of the product cropped away, advertisements can also be strangely alien and beautiful. Prince also does pop art that reminds me of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, but instead of Campbell's soup cans, he juxtaposes New Yorker comics and low-brow jokes for an oddly provocative and displacing effect. I also liked his series of nurse paintings, where seductive nurses from romance pulp novels turn into bloody specters. The latest work by Prince is also very interesting, where he fuses the painting style of William de Kooning with pornographic images. The effect was disquieting, but it forces people to rethink their perceptions of sex and their hold over them.

Also of interest was the Modernity in Central Europe exhibit that featured Dadaist publications and Eastern European avant-garde photography. I loved looking at the stuff people from the Bauhaus school in Germany worked on in the post-WWI age. Decades might have passed since then, but the works at the exhibit still look edgy and fresh today.

I was looking forward to seeing Frank Llloyd Wright's work on the Guggenheim, but the exterior of the museum was under renovation. The interior, however, was amazing, with its spiraling gallery walls and clear-glass roof.

Afterward, we hit up Papaya King on 5th Ave, which serves up onion/kraut hot dogs and fresh papaya juice. Apparently, this one is the original hot dog/papaya stand of New York. I usually don't like sauerkraut, but the kraut dog was neither too sour nor pungent, and the onion dog was slathered in tomato sauce that hit the spot after a long day of museum-browsing. The cajun fries with cheese were served piping hot with cold, fresh papaya juice to wash it all down. I haven't tried Gray's Papaya, a rival restaurant, but I hope to do so by the end of the trip.

In the evening, we walked along 5th Ave to look at the holiday window displays at the big department stores. Bergdorf Goodman was most impressive with their over-the-top, exotic fashions (mix of Madison Ave chic and ancient Egyptian royalty) and glittering golden props (an elephant included).

The crowds were getting too unruly, so we escaped to the East Village and ate at Kenka, a Japanese restaurant along St. Marks Pl., located near a depressing CBGB (RIP) gift store. The food was not the best, and the portions varied from generous to standard. You can order cheap, like $5 ramen and $3 soba, but the catch is that you have to order at least $6.50 worth of food for each person. It's a stingy rule, but a combination of that price can get you a bowl of ramen, rice, miso soup and salad. Eating at the restaurant was fun, not because of the food, but because of the great lengths the owners went to recreate 1950s Japan. All throughout, there were vintage Japanese sake posters and framed pictures of old Japanese lounge singers. The walls are adorned with only Japanese, and the menu implores people to use Japanese if they're going to tag up the bathroom walls. One curiosity were the "rules" stipulated on the menu: no masturbating, no throwing up outside the restaurant (or pay $20), no fighting and no breaking anything (or pay for the broken item). This is probably a result of one too many nights of drunken bastards going on a sake-fueled rampage.

Monday morning, we woke up to to eat at the West Village, where we headed to Fatty Crab for some damn good Chinese food. I don't know what kind of Chinese cooking it was, and I admit that I was a little skeptical after seeing that the entire staff inside was white (including the cook). We ordered some noodles, salad and soup for the meal. The noodles had vinegar, Chinese sausage and watercress, with the flavor turning from sweet to salty with one bite. The salad contained watercress, watermelon, fried pork and pickled radish -- the pork's slight greasiness a nice contrast to the fresh vegetables and fruit. The soup, served in a claypot, was light and warming, with chicken and tofu creating sophisticated flavors that I, as an amateur food writer, don't know how to describe. To break the flavor of the dishes, we also had some rice lightly seasoned with coconut. For dessert, we had some coconut cake -- lightly chewy and sweet. So far, this was the best meal we had in the city. The restaurant was nicely furnished with red walls and simple wooden tables -- a lot like Burma Superstar in San Francisco -- and they played The Arcade Fire, which I think was a nice touch to my dining experience.

After lunch, we went to the Chocolate Bar for some coffee and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate -- their specialty -- was rich and thick, with every sip like having a big chocolate bar in liquid form. While in the Village, we went in search for Bob Dylan's one-time apartment on 4th St. When we got there, all we found was a non-descript apartment next to a lingerie store. Nevertheless, it was cool to think about Dylan living there, making waves in the Greenwich folk music scene.

Right now, Bryant Park is filled with cool shops (selling everything from handmade leather journals to small New Yorker magazine cover prints) and an ice skating rink. Surrounded by highrise business complexes, the park is a welcome sanctuary in a city that can get crazy. Next to the park, the New York Public Library is a beautiful, ornate museum/library that's currently housing a Jack Kerouac exhibit (with original manuscripts, letters and photographs by Kerouac, Ginsberg and other members of the so-called Beat Generation). What got me most excited was the original typed manuscript of On the Road, which I didn't expect to catch here in New York. The library is also having an exhibit for modernist graphic design, but we decided to visit that later in the week.

At the end of the day, we were tired and looking for something to do, and we happened to run across a Church of Scientology near Times Square. We went in, and we were greeted by a friendly lady who took us into a small viewing room to screen a 15-minute introductory film on Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard. The film focused mostly on how talented and intelligent Hubbard was -- it emphasized his prolific body of literature (which amounted to a lot of pulp fiction from the 1930s) and Scientology books (which it also repeatedly mentioned were NY Times best-sellers). Then it went on to emphasize that Scientology was, indeed, a legitimate, government-recognized religion. The narrator of the film was a blandly good-looking square who couldn't pass off a sincere smile if it depended on his life. I liked how out of all the celebrities the movie featured as testimonies for Scientology's greatness, it conveniently left out Tom Cruise. There was one particular bit that was interesting where the host interviews an "auditor" (which the film does a piss-poor job of explaining what he actually does) who talks about the evils of psychology and how all psychologists are malevolent quacks who should be put out of business.

At the end, the host ends in a really cheesy, really grandiloquent speech about how joining Scientology is the logical evolution of mankind. It was filled with emotional pandering and loaded rhetoric, especially one particular line that went something like "If you walk out of this building and never talk about Scientology again, that's fine. But you might as well jump off a building or blow your head off." Geez. Talk about heavy-handed. Then the film ends in a door opening up to a great white light.

In summary, the film was as vague as possible with explaining what Scientology is actually about and how Hubbard went from being a prolific pulp writer to a prolific writer of spiritual guides. Also, it kept on emphasizing the volumes and volumes of books left behind by Hubbard and the importance of buying these books for increased knowledge and spiritual enlightenment. After we were done, the lady kept on pushing us to buy an introductory book about Scientology for $15, and when we refused, her tone changed immediately from congenial to frustrated.

We hightailed the fuck out of there and went out to eat.

Tomorrow: Columbia University and Harlem?

Papaya King
Locations throughout NYC

Kenka
25 St. Marks Pl.

Fatty Crab
643 Hudson St.

Chocolate Bar
48 8th Ave

New York City, Day 1

2007-12-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

A few of us at Forest Fire are spending the next week in New York City. We will be here until the 23rd, so please check back often for updates on our trip.

We arrived at JFK on a Virgin America A320. Since the last time I flew with Virgin, the in-flight entertainment system was considerably more bug-free and they've added free Boing Boing TV episodes to their list of "premium" TV shows. This is a very cool addition, even if each episode is only a few minutes long. The satellite TV on-board still has a lot of problems. Most of the time, the reception was down or the image would freeze up. Still, Virgin has a pretty satisfactory selection of music that more than makes up for the spotty television (Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk, to name a few). Listening to "Star Guitar" while taking off is as great as watching the Michel Gondry's music video for the song.

I'm typing this up at the Broadway Hotel & Hostel, a seven-story building in the Upper West Side. The surrounding area isn't the most happening place, but it has a good selection of restaurants (from Mexican to Thai) and the neighborhood doesn't seem too "dodgy," as a lot of the British/Australian travelers staying here would say. The bathrooms and rooms are clean, with hot running water (very important). On the first floor, there's a nicely furnished lobby with plenty of couches, tables and flat-screen TV's playing Woody Allen and gangster movies. There are also vending machines and computers with Internet access. Service, for us, has been good, although later at night while sitting on a couch, I overheard the lobby receptionist speaking rudely to a customer. Every question she answered had a tinge of annoyance to it. I don't know if it's a New York thing, but it was more than a little bitchy.

For lunch, we ate at Jerusalem Restaurant, one of those small family-owned restaurants that make up the character of city-dining. They serve up lamb, gyro and grape leaf falafels straight from the grill. The price was reasonable for New York City and the meal was good.

In the evening, we headed out to Arturo's for New York-style pizza. We ordered a large sausage/mushroom pizza for $19. Despite the slow and somewhat negligent service, the pizza was delicious. The sauce wasn't heavy, the cheese was melted just right and the dough was baked thin in the signature New York style. We arrived at dinner time on a Saturday night, which probably explains the slow service. The jazz pianist and drummer were nice additions to the interior, where it's dimly lit and furnished with pieces from the restaurant's 50-year history.

Every station we hit up, I notice that New York City is a very musical town. Today alone, I heard Spanish guitar, a Bob Dylan cover, a pots and pans percussionist, an accordionist and an a capella duo that sang the kind of pop/R&B fare you'd hear at a high school choir show. But they had the balls to sing in front of a tough audience, so I give them that.

It's snowing right now in the city. We briefly walked through Washington Square Park, which isn't the same without people playing guitar or just hanging out at the steps. At night, we saw a few belligerent homeless people and some tourists. But the Washington Arch is beautiful as always, especially at night with all the lights.

That's it for today. Tomorrow, we hit up Central Park and the Met.

Jerusalem Restaurant
2715 Broadway
Upper West Side

Arturo's
105 W Houston St
New York, NY 10012

Forest Fire in 2008 (edited)

2007-12-05T16:19:00.001-08:00

For the sake of a more refined and stronger issue, we've decided to push the release of the new Forest Fire to the first week of Winter Quarter. Thanks for sticking around with us and we hope you'll continue to read us in the coming year.

Jens Lekman @ The Troubadour (11/10/07)

2007-11-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Jens Lekman loves his women. This is apparent from all the songs he dedicates to his past lovers and friends, possibly real and imagined -- there's Shirin, the lovely hair stylist that runs a salon in her apartment; Nina, his lesbian friend who lies to her father about being engaged to Jens; and Julie, the girl I imagine Jens once loved back home in a Gothenburg suburb. And as if he couldn't express his love for women enough, he tours with an almost all-female band. The bassist, accordionist, drummer, and two violinists -- all women, except a male D.J.

The opening band for the show was Throw Me The Statue, a synth-heavy Seattle band recently signed to Secretly Canadian. They play fun, catchy indie pop, the kind full of sunny hand claps and pop melodies, but I enjoyed them only intermittently. The band played well, with energy and bombast, but I found singer Scott Reitherman's voice a little underwhelming. Compared to all the band's wacky synths and rhythms, his vocals lacked the same personality and range.

Jens Lekman, however, was a complete musician and performer. With each song, Lekman shared a short back story, all with his distinct, understated wit. The night at the Troubadour was part-music act, part-stand-up comedy routine. His baritone voice sounded just like his recordings, and his band reproduced accurately all the samples and instrumentations of his latest album, Night Falls Over Kortedala. On stage, Lekman is as witty and funny as he is on his songs.

The set list mostly included tracks from Kortedala (including the singles "The Opposite of Hallelujah," "Sipping On The Sweet Nectar," and, of course, "Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo"). I was disappointed that he didn't play the R&B-sampling "Kanske Är Jag Kär I Dig," but he made up for it with an encore cover of Paul Simon and Chevy Chase's "You Can Call Me Al." And all without any snarky irony.

Remaining tour dates:

11/13/07 Dallas, TX - Granada Theater solo w/ Sarah Jaffe

11/14/07 Austin, TX - The Parish solo

11/15/07 Tallahassee, FL - Club Downunder solo

11/16/07 Atlanta, GA - Drunken Unicorn solo

11/27/07 Manchester, UK - Sacred Trinity Church

11/28/07 Leeds, UK - Holy Trinity Church

11/29/07 Sheffield, UK - The Plug w/ Josh Rouse

11/30/07 Manchester, UK - Academy 2 w/ Josh Rouse

12/01/07 Glasgow, UK - QMU w/ Josh Rouse

12/03/07 Gateshead, UK - The Sage 2 w/ Josh Rouse

12/04/07 Nottingham, UK - Rescue Rooms w/ Josh Rouse

12/05/07 Bristol, UK - Academy w/ Josh Rouse

12/07/07 Oxford, UK - Academy w/ Josh Rouse

12/08/07 Brighton, UK - Concorde 2 w/ Josh Rouse

12/09/07 London, UK - Shepherds Bush Empire w/ Josh Rouse

12/11/07 London, UK - The Luminaire

The Go! Team @ The Echoplex

2007-10-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

While most of Southern California was watching TV or listening to the radio about information on the wildfires in the seven-county area, a six-piece group from Brighton was burning down the Echoplex at a sold-out show.

Grand Ole Party, a San Diego trio that I can best describe as a combination of club rock and the voice of a leading Broadway lady. Although it's hard to tell the songs apart sometimes, all three musicians are talented, and lead singer/drummer Kristin has one of the best voices I've ever heard.

Following Grand Ole Party were Bodies of Water, a band which literally overnight has received a better opinion from me. Live, the L.A. 8-piece (although they play with 10 people sometimes) sounded pretty lousy, despite the decent acoustics of the Echoplex (compared to its upstairs counterpart, where it's hard to discern a guitar strumming from a bomb exploding). However, upon listening to the same songs on their myspace, I have to say that they're not all that bad when they're in the studio. I highly suggest them to anyone who may be a fan of Arcade Fire-ish bands.

These two acts still couldn't compare to the performance given by The Go! Team just two hours after the opening act. The band plays just like you'd imagine, as if a cheerleading squad led by Sonic Youth ran onstage, leaping and dancing. If The Go! Team had been in charge of my high school marching band when it came to organizing pep rallies, maybe I'd have a bit more school spirit. But more on the concert.

Despite being the driving force of the band, Ian Parton is probably the most physically reserved of the musicians during the performance except for the meek Ky Fukami who mostly plays drums except for her shy but sweet solo tune toward the middle of the set. Ninja gives the band a necessary edge of attitude and energy and does a great job of rallying the band and the audience into a powerful, can-do frenzy. The members constantly rotate their formations as everyone shares duties on drums, bass, guitar and whatever else is necessary, including keyboards, glockenspiel and harmonica.

One of the best things about watching The Go! Team perform is that there is never a dull moment. There's hardly even a moment to breathe, as Ninja works on ways to warm up the crowd with her eccentric dancing and chant rallying, drawing cheers from even the most reserved members of the audience. The band doesn't let up in their technical ability and, with the help of some quick soundboard work to integrate Parton's ingenious samples, provide a sound that's unique but remains true to the album. The bass combines the soul of the motown and funk roots of the music while being ripped through a guitar pedal rig that would make Kevin Shields blush, giving the band the necessary gritty bottom. Parton, Kaori Tsuchida (who is teaming up with former Minuteman Mike Watt for their awesome project, Funanori) and Sam Dook (Who also trades off with Ian for drumming duties) bring the Sonic Youth-influenced guitars, with noisy, cutting guitar playing with no concern for the physical integrity of the instrument. Before leaving the stage, Ian Parton takes a few moments to provide the audience with random noise from his Jazzmaster before dutifully throwing it into Fukami's drum set, only to return for a two-song encore and more equipment damage, this time at the hands of the entire band. The two drum sets provide the polyrhythmic energy without the Slipknotesque suck, setting up the backbone for the band.

Overall, The Go! Team provided a stellar performance without letting up. The band is playing at this very moment on KCRW, but you can always get the podcast. The band's sounding great, so I'd certainly suggest it to anyone interested.

The band are playing a free in-store at Amoeba Music tonight at 6 PM so if you already missed out at The Glass House and The Echoplex and still want to hear The Go! Team, hurry up and beat the traffic today, it sounds like it's gonna be a good one. For those of you that aren't in Los Angeles, The Go! Team only have a handful of North American performances left before they tour Europe, Japan and Australia. Here's the list:

10/21 6 PM Amoeba Instore (Hollywood)
10/21 8 PM Paradise (Boston)
10/27 8 PM Bowery Ballroom (New York) *SOLD OUT*
10/28 8 PM Studio B (Brooklyn)
10/30 8 PM 9:30 Club (Washington DC)
10/31 8 PM Theatre Of Living Arts (Philadelphia)
11/1 8 PM The Phoenix (Toronto)

Forest Fire, Vol. 3, Issue 1 comes out Nov. 26

2007-10-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Things have been very quiet around Forest Fire in these first few weeks of school. But fear not, we're at work on the next issue. Please look out for it on Nov. 26.

Meanwhile, pick up the current issue of Incite Magazine, a start-up publication here on campus that covers everything from Al Gore's environmental battles to the inner workings of the Mara Salvatrucha gang. They are online at incitemagazine.net.

In other news, we are looking to do a long overdue update to our website and are looking for any web designers/webmasters looking to revamp and/or manage the site. If you're interested in helping out, please email us at forestfiremag@gmail.com.

The Boss and Arcade Fire?

2007-10-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

Bruce Stringsteen and Arcade Fire - Keep the car running

The good people (person?) at YANP put up a video of, well...Bruce Springsteen and Arcade Fire playing together in concert. Looks like David Bowie isn't the only older rocker teaming up with Win Butler's magnificent musical army. There isn't much else to say about this except "watch it". So do that.

HOLY SHIT MUSIC POST OF THE YEAR

2007-09-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

YES YES YES YES YES LADIES AND GENTLEMEN IT IS HERE!

NEW. RADIOHEAD. ALBUM.

While visiting Dead Air Space, I read a note by Jonny Greenwood that read:
"Hello everyone.
Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days;
We've called it In Rainbows.
Love from us all.

Jonny"

Now, I thought for a second that this would be a joke. Certainly Radiohead wouldn't release an album without a distribution label! They're not that awesome. But once again, they've fooled us all. With a completely homebrewed operation, it seems that band has offered the music world a chance to listen to their new album as soon as October 10th. Now, I'll give you the rundown on what's going on and how it's going to pan out.

The album has been in production for quite a while and now that the mastering is complete, Radiohead has decided to release the album in two formats: A digital download that is available starting october 10th and a "discbox" containing two CDs and two vinyl LPs that will be available starting December 3rd. Orders can be taken now via credit card.

There are a few pros/cons to both options: the digital download only has half of In Rainbows, but the website allows you to choose how much you actually want to pay for the album, in addition to a 45 pence (about $1 US) processing fee (I gave them $5 along with the fee).
The discbox contains the entire album in both CD and vinyl LP format (AND the digital download), but it comes at a hefty price of 40 quid ($80 US), shipping included. Considering the band doesn't seem to have a major distribution method, I understand the price, but I'll have to wait for another paycheck before I can secure my copy.

Here is the list of tracks, according to the website:

Digital Download, CD 1 and Vinyl
15 STEP
BODYSNATCHERS
NUDE
WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI
ALL I NEED
FAUST ARP
RECKONER
HOUSE OF CARDS
JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
VIDEOTAPE

CD 2 and Vinyl
MK 1
DOWN IS THE NEW UP
GO SLOWLY
MK 2
LAST FLOWERS
UP ON THE LADDER
BANGERS AND MASH
4 MINUTE WARNING

I was wondering what to put under the music section of this year's Forest Fire, but I think we'll have plenty of material now. Expect more about In Rainbows as time progresses.

EDIT: Continuing last night's music wank, Rolling Stone.com says that in a press release, Radiohead have decided to also do a traditional CD release of the album in early 2008, so those of you who love Radiohead but have very shallow pockets can still get the whole album in a few months.

For a healthy mental environment.

2007-09-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

Help support Adbusters's lawsuit against major Canadian broadcasting corporations and protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press. If they succeed, possibilities of similar lawsuits may arise in the States.

WHY?!

Our minds have become a virtual dumping ground of pollutants — manipulative ads, distorted news, untold violence, spin and hype. We can cope with the media onslaught to a degree. But all signs suggest that the cumulative effects of this toxic culture — on our stress levels, our moods, our relationships, our worldviews, even our mental health — could become one the most pressing issues of our generation.*

WHAT TO DO:

Sign here and support the Mental Environment Movement. (I swear it takes one minute to do.)

Like the rest of Adbusters Magazine, the Media Carta, supports meaningful advertising for a healthy mental environment free of materialistic, sex-driven, mind-cluttering advertisements--at least outdoors? Instead, Adbusters emphasize the up and coming power of the consumer. Cities like São Paulo, Brazil have already adopted a healthier mental environment, eliminating all outdoor billboards and advertisements from residential neighborhoods, isolating key areas for advertising.

For more information on the Mental Environment Movement and other readings, visit the website.

*From Adbusters's website.

Consumer-friendly Kicks

2007-08-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

The anti-corporate, environmentally conscious, pro-grassroots capitalists at The Blackspot Anticorporation, via Adbusters Magazine, have produced reasonably priced kicks, knocking off corporate Nike and Converse designs. The sneakers, according to Adbusters, is one way to blackspot traditional capitalism, using Treasure Island's cursed literary device.

Because the Blackspot name and logo have been open-sourced and trademark free, the team encourages other independent, grassroots businesses to accommodate the campaign. So far, they've sold over 25,000 pairs of shoes all clad in 100% organic hemp and 70% biodegradable rubber soles and car tires. The "Unswoosher" and the "Blackspot Sneaker" are hand-painted, stitched and glued, and processed by sweat-free Portuguese workers.

Still skeptical where your eighty bucks goes? The website even includes a breakdown of each material, production, labor, marketing and tax price. The shoes don't look half-bad and it's a no-brainer fashion statement (if you're into that).

THE FLYING CLUB CUP LEAKS

2007-08-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

Join me in this moment of "Holy fucking shit" as Forest Fire revels in the leak of Zach Condon's newest album. We don't want proliferate the pirating but some of us just couldn't help but download it ourselves (as true fans, we'll go out and buy it on October 9th and suggest you do the same). We haven't had the chance to listen to the album in its entirety just yet, but a review will be up in just a couple of days. The Flying Club Cup will be Zach's third release of 2007 and his second album in two years. Will his talents ever stop emerging? I can only hope they don't.

Fuck Yeah Fest IV (Continued)

2007-08-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

What more is there to say aside from what Abe has discussed? (I wrote this when I began the article. I can apparently say quite a bit) The four of us were, for the most part, in agreement with what happened.

The only act I was interested in seeing beforehand was The Mae Shi. It would have been wise of me, however, to listen to some of their songs beforehand.
The Mae Shi's music is far from impenetrable, but to go to one of their shows without knowing any of their music can be a very confusing experience. I was pleased with their stage appearance and energy. Lots of L.A. bands can be very stoic and boring when performing, but they were jumping around like toddlers. Unfortunately, the Echo's difficult acoustics make it hard to hear anything and unless you have some sort of idea of what their songs sound like on a recording, it's difficult to catch on. In short: their live concerts are esoteric in the sense that if you haven't heard them before, you probably won't enjoy it as much as someone who has. I am all for seeing them again, however, but only after I've had a better sampling of their repertoire.

As Abe mentioned, the Taix (a very nice restaurant if you can afford it) was a 21+ area, so comedy was out of the question (a shame, because had I gone Sunday I would have wanted to see Bob Odenkirk). Brother Reade was nothing special, and no words can express the degree of fury I had towards Lavender Diamond. Becky Stark was absolutely obnoxious. Her band, however, was quite good. Once Ms. Stark took the stage, though, it became some sort of recreation of a beauty pageant rehearsal (or a twisted version of My Super Sweet 16), with a glittery princess barking demands at everyone while others tended to her every whim. I can only hope that Becky Stark is a better performer than she is a brat, because there was certainly no performing on her part last Saturday. But you've heard two people bitch about Lavender Diamond now, what's the fun in that? Let's get to the meat and potatoes of Saturday night (and I'm not talking about the Brite Spot's food).

Busdriver made up for any sort of disappointment I experienced that evening. I have seen few performances as dynamic as the one Regan Farquhar gave the audience at the Echo that night. If some of you were confused by my description of The Mae Shi's performance, this may put it into better perspective. The Mae Shi and Busdriver played the exact same venue only two and a half hours apart from each other, but Busdriver were completely accessible. It was impossible to hear what Regan was saying because of the body-shaking bass and lousy acoustics, but it didn't matter. Regan's rapping is so great that you don't need to know.
Unlike most rappers that only follow the beat, Regan elevates the style by following the melody (he keeps up with the flute part of Bach's "Badinerie" in Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor perfectly when the song is sampled in "Imaginary Places") and sometimes modifying the timbre of his voice with synth pedals and his own formidable voice talents. Backed by three turntablists/musicians, Busdriver was the combination of talent, energy and ability to relate to the audience without words that the night had desperately needed. You could have showed up to the door of the Echo without even knowing what music was and Busdriver would have sounded fantastic to you. I'm sure Regan's lyrical abilities are nothing short of great (I haven't heard any recordings yet, but I plan to), but he could be rapping in Klingon and I wouldn't give a shit. He's just that good.

Perhaps it was our lack of research of the bands playing that night that reduced our experience. Or, maybe the bands that night sucked and on Sunday there were better ones (I saw xBxRx and The Muslims on the bill for that day). I have confidence in L.A.'s music scene and, with this year's turnout (it was pretty full), I'm sure that there will be many Fuck Yeah Fests to come. I'm look forward to next year and hope the 2008 curators will bring together some great acts.

Feist, Pornographers, National, Mates and Grizzly Bears... Oh my god!

2007-08-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

So my daily Rolling Stone E-mail digest usually turns out to be a fruitless endeavor, only keeping me up to date on the newest Van Halen tour and some crap about Amy Winehouse being in rehab. A real snorefest, I know. But sometimes, the very last part of the newsletter provides interesting information, like who's playing on which late night show. Tonight's list was littered with people I know nothing about, except for two: Tay Zonday and Feist.

Now, I've had my share of Chocolate Rain, but I can never get enough of our Canadian songstress. This woman can make music, not just talk about "dirty secrets of economy." But I digress. To avoid mentioning reruns (which are common during the summer), I usually check my sources about these performances. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only was this appearance new, but it didn't include Ms. Feist by herself!

According to my sometimes-friend/sometimes-enemy Pitchfork Media, Leslie Feist will be accompanied by the likes of Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning (of Broken Social Scene); The National's Aaron Dessner, Bryan Devendorf and Scott Devendorf; Nicole Atkins; Carl Newman (of the New Pornographers); both Mates of State and all of Grizzly Bear. Pitchfork's interview with Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear says the group will be performing "1234".

In lieu of having nothing else interesting to say, I will also add that Feist will be doing a short east coast tour before heading off for Europe to play a string of dates there.

For those who don't watch much television, Letterman is on at 11:30 on CBS. Make sure to watch out for the last 30 minutes or so of the show, where the musical guests close out the episode. If you don't own a television but have a computer (you'd be surprised at how many college students are in this position), I'm sure the performance will be on Youtube before the end of the week.

Fuck Yeah Fest IV or Why I Stopped Caring

2007-08-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

The Fuck Yeah Fest is an annual music festival that takes place in the Echo Park neighborhood. It's one of the cheaper festivals that take place around California, so a few of us decided to make the drive to L.A. to check it out.

Spanning across four venues (The Echo, Echoplex, Rec Center and Taix), the festival charges $13 per day for an entire evening and night of obscure, unlistenable and/or mediocre bands from around the country. A handful of O.K. bands, like L.A. locals The Muslims, were on the bill too.

Unfortunately for me, I was in a rather despondent mood, a lot like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, feeling numb to everything that was happening around me. So in other words, I'm unable to write up an objective or even fairly subjective report on the Fuck Yeah Fest. So if you get annoyed halfway through this post, please do stop reading.

The first act we listened to were The Mae Shi. I remember them being loud and somewhat catchy, but their lyrics started to annoy me 30 seconds into one song. The lead singer sang on and on, "I get everything I want" or something abrasively bratty like that. Toward the end of the set, he started crowd surfing, and by that time, I was already tired and wondering what the big fucking deal was.

The Mae Shi have received a lot of blog hype, and maybe if I was in a better mood that night, I would be writing something like, "They had a lot of energy, and they played all sorts of interesting instruments I can't name. I am very optimistic for their careers." But since I don't know anything about music writing, I'm just going to shut up and say they were pretty O.K. Whatever.

We tried to head over to Taix, a fancy French restaurant that was hosting the comedy lineup, but the place was closed to anyone under 21. So we headed back to The Echo and sat through a hip-hop act, Brother Reade, who I can only say resembled a mix between Brother Ali and El-P. Another white emcee who had decent lyricism, a couple of hard beats, but nothing amazing. Mind you, I am not bashing on Brother Reade because he is white or claiming that white emcees need to be better than the average black emcee to prove their worth. This black/white argument in hip-hop is null and counterproductive to the culture, unless you're part of that potentially awesome and yet-to-exist Hip-hop Studies major at U.C. Berkeley. Then it might be a relevant topic to discuss.

Anyway, I digress. I've already driven this post to a level of self-indulgence unforeseen in Forest Fire, so I'll just end with a review of the last act I saw before I left the festival to eat (which was the best part of the night), Lavender Diamond.

Lavender Diamond is a "folk/country-pop" quartet from Los Angeles that has toured with The Decemberists. They were the headliners for the first night of Fuck Yeah Fest at the Rec Center. I remember Lavender Diamond from The Decemberists show at The Wiltern last fall. At that show, I couldn't really hear lead singer Becky Stark very well, since Decemberists fans don't care for anyone else but Colin Meloy and would love to perform sexual favors for him if they could. Sorry for being crass. But from what I could hear and see, Lavender Diamond performed some catchy whimsical pop music, the kind that you listen to while making scrapbooks about ghosts and dinosaurs.

But on the night of Fuck Yeah Fest, Becky Stark was unbearable. She talked as if she was nine-years-old with a Valium prescription and was more Madonna than "folk/country-pop" singer. She started out with a cutesy, somewhat funny bit on mistaking the Fuck Yeah Fest for the "Fuck You Fest." Then she went on and on about how people shouldn't use plastic bags at the grocery store. Adding to all this, she could hardly keep the high notes on her songs. She blamed the sound guy for this and then, like a nine-year-old, stated, "I can't sing if I can't hear myself," as she sulked around on stage for another five minutes.

In the thirty minutes I stood up for Lavender Diamond, I had to watch this prima donna shout out "Fuck the patriarchy!" more times than she should have before it stopped being funny, bitch about the sound, bitch about plastic bags (not very sincerely, but ironically, I assume, as most hipsters like to do because they're afraid to be sincere and earnest about anything) and leave her more talented and more level-headed band members to distract the crowd while she acted like an undeserving, overprivileged nine-year-old whose parents didn't shower her with enough attention. I overheard someone saying, "Isn't she radiant?" at the beginning of the show. But that sentiment soon shifted to, "Maybe she's like this because it's a smaller venue." I don't know what was wrong with Becky Stark that night, but it was a piss-poor showing on her part.

Midway through the show, we left and went out to eat at the Brite Spot (1918 W. Sunset Blvd.), where they serve nicely priced breakfast sandwiches and O'Brien potatoes until 4:00 a.m. on weekends. Best part of the night.

Tom and Ian went to see Busdriver back at The Echo, and they mentioned he was good as expected. He also did a They Might Be Giants cover, which I wish I had seen.

New Beirut Track Surfaces

2007-08-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

YANP already posted this two days ago, but I feel obligated to report on one of the artists this site salivates over. Good old Zach Condon will be releasing The Flying Cup Club on October 9th. Here is the link to "A Sunday Smile". Definitely a winner.

Here are the remaining dates for the tour:
September 23: Princeton, NJ - Terrace F Club
September 24: New York, NY - Society for Ethical Culture
September 26: New York, NY - Delacorte Theater
September 30: Montreal, Quebec - La Sala Rossa
October 2: Toronto, Ontario - Danforth Music Hall
October 4: Chicago, IL - Portage Theater
October 8: San Francisco, CA - Herbst Theater
October 9: San Francisco, CA - Herbst Theater
October 10: Los Angeles, CA - The Avalon

All of these dates are with Colleen and Forest Fire (well, most of us) will be at the Avalon show. If you're in the Los Angeles area and see a few rabid people wearing elephant noses, it might be us.

Not About Fugazi

2007-08-19T20:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight I had a very fun dinner with a fantastic DC band called Jukebox the Ghost, who I saw opening for Tokyo Police Club and Ra Ra Riot a couple weeks ago at DC's Rock and Roll Hotel. I don't remember ever being that impressed by an opening band, so I took advantage of my dwindling time here in DC to chat with them about DC's music scene (post-Fugazi, post-dance punk), the proposed all ages ban on venues, what it's like being compared to Coldplay, and the possible indie revival of Hanson. I will be sure to write up our interview for Forest Fire's next print issue, but until that happens I wanted to give them another Google hit and a little Forest Fire love. If you haven't heard a good pop song in awhile, you'll do well by checking out their myspace and listening to Hold It In and Good Day at the very least. Don't let their pop sensibilities fool you: these boys are quite capable of rocking the fuck out live, so here's hoping they'll be able to make it out to California now that they've all graduated from college with their useless journalism and biology degrees.

To end the evening, we walked around DC's Chinatown, a pretty unique place as it has an Urban Outfitters and an Ann Taylor Loft. I gave Ben and Tommy (pianist and guitarist, respectively; both sing) a choice of background for my picture: Bed Bath and Beyond, or Ann Taylor Loft. Here's what they went with:

Let's wish them well on their tour.

Some mood music.

2007-08-04T18:30:00.001-07:00

À la Motel de Moka (for more and better themed playlists), I've compiled music for a mood that is neither concrete--nor for wooing. It starts in a secluded bath tub and drifts to a mythical place much like Pan's Labyrinth. Afterwards, it returns--hence, the track titled "The Return." And just for an attempted melodramatic ending, you'll discover the "Symbol of Life, Love and Aesthetics" (!), or at least the song. (Note: this epiphany is never guaranteed nor is it even suggested. This is only a human being's natural inclination to construct transcendental arguments, if false or irrelevant, from an experience, therefore reducing it to bullshit.) Do enjoy.

1. Lemon Jelly, Lemon Jelly .KY - In the Bath

2. Espers, II - Dead Queen*

3. Aphex Twin, DrukQs - Ruglen Holon

4. September Collective, September Collective - The Return

5. Susumu Yokota, Symbol - Symbol of Life, Love and Aesthetics

* Also discovered and purchased at Sound Trolley

** The image above is a detailed photo of Alexander Grant's piece "Ladders." You can see the full-sized artwork at the MOCA.

I am cured of Hiatus-itis.

2007-08-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already heard from me or OC Weekly, check out Costa Mesa's newly opened, independent record store The Sound Trolley. The place is small but worth the trip. It's located obscurely behind a Parisian tailor and the Little Knight bar on 17th Street.

They carry plenty of music from the 60s and 70s, as well as some new stuff, to refresh your musical palette. I know the first time I came in, I told Josh (co-owner of Sound Trolley) that I was tired of the music I was listening to at the time. I came out with an awesome Agamenon CD and a profile subject for LJ! Now I consider myself a walking advertisement. Anyway, if you don't know what you're looking for, like me, try the vintage approach: ask!

I've also uploaded ~~two~~ three of my favorite Agamenon tracks off their one and only album Todos Rien de Mi. Luckily, with the help of Josh, I cured my musical hiatus--and blogging hiatus?--with some good, old hippie-haired musicians.

Agamenon - Todos Rien de Mi
Agamenon - Please Little Man
Agamenon - Cuco Go Fly

I'd upload the entire album, but I believe it's worth driving to Sound Trolley (you won't find it at Best Buy nor Amoeba) and buying the album.

The Sound Trolley Records
440 E. 17th Street
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(949) 642-4846

Jesus, Doraemon and Geishas

2007-07-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

"Redemption." Oil on canvas.

There is a very excellent retrospective exhibition for L.A. artist Alex Gross at the CS Fullerton Grand Central Art Center. Gross's influences include 1800s daguerreotypes, religious imagery, Japanese pop art and macabre master Edward Gorey. Darkly irreverent, he paints moths, butterflies, geishas, WWII airplanes, gentlemen from the 1800s, etc. in finely detailed oil paints. The gallery is open free to the public.

And while you're there, be sure to check out the OCCCA for local artist Gary Simpson's "Commonground191" exhibit, a collection of collages made with soil gathered from all 192 member countries of the United Nations. Also in display are containers of soil from nations ranging from Cape Verde to Myanmar.

For more information, go to http://www.grandcentralartcenter.com and http://www.occca.org.

Thurston Moore turns 49

2007-07-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

"Kids think of us as being totally over the hill."

Not over the hill just yet, Thurston. Happy birthday from all of us at Forest Fire!

Jenny, You're Barely Alive....COME BACK!

2007-07-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Those of us who have woken from the spell cast by Pottermania (expect a review within the following days) have come to find some disturbing evidence at the hands of Rilo Kiley's leading single from their next album, Under the Blacklight. The song in question is called "The Moneymaker," with vapid lyrics that seem to hint towards some sort of life of prostitution or pornography, played over an embarrassingly crappy guitar lick.

Warner Music Group, I demand that you return the soul of Jenny Lewis to her rightful owner so that she can produce good music, instead of this sorry display:

Front Page on NPR.org

2007-07-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

Senate Democrats are preparing to introduce a series of amendments to a defense policy bill aimed at getting U.S. troops out of Iraq. Baghdad officials say a quick withdrawal could lead to civil war.

Could lead to civil war? Either these Baghdad "officials" are really thick or they're in stubborn denial. Civil war's been going on for years now.

Does anyone have the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff summer track?

2007-07-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

Posting has been sparse, lately, but that's only because everyone is having too much fun over summer. I'm only half-serious about that. This past Friday, we saw Feist and Grizzly Bear at The Wiltern. Needless to say, it was amazing. She played a good mix of songs from Let It Die and The Reminder, but the highlight of the night was when Feist brought out Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene to play piano as she sang "Lover's Spit." The two are apparently dating, so you can be sure that Drew was the center of envy in that theater for all the guys (and some girls).

If you haven't bought tickets for the Oct. 10 Beirut show at The Avalon, tickets are still available now.

Upcoming posts:

The Last Magazine
More crooks and liars
Imaginary music festivals
Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix

Los Angeles, I'm Yours

2007-06-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

Here are the L.A. shows I'm looking forward to (but will never be able to attend all) in the summer and fall. Until Orange County expands past The Detroit Bar (I'm not 21 yet), Plush Lab (the kind of bands I like play only occasionally), OCCCA (not good for when I want to see big-name acts) and Sol Art (not good when I want to hear something loud and danceable), I'm sticking to L.A. for live music.

JUNE

21 - Marissa Nadler (Fingerprints Record Shop)
27 - Arthur Magazine Benefit Party
29 - Feist (Wiltern)*
30 - Battles (Troubadour)

JULY

7 - The Decemberists, Band of Horses, Andrew Bird (Hollywood Bowl)*
10 - Klaxons (El Rey)^%
13 - Os Mutantes (El Rey)*
16 - Vampire Weekend (Troubadour)* - Tickets are sold only at the door, $5
18 - The Polyphonic Spree (El Rey)
20 - Sonic Youth (Greek Theater)
20 - The Bird and The Bee (El Rey)
21 - Daft Punk, Kavinsky, Sebastian (L.A. Sports Arena)* - SOLD OUT
25 - The Rapture (Mayan Theater)^%
26 - The Rapture (Mayan Theater)^%
26 - Sea Wolf (UCLA Hammer Museum)*
31 - Peter Bjorn & John (Henry Fonda)*

AUGUST

11 - Tiesto (L.A. Sports Arena)
18 - Blonde Redhead (Sunset Junction)
19 - Blonde Redhead (Glass House)*
25 - Au Revoir Simone (Troubadour)
28 - Gogol Bordello (Henry Fonda)*
29 - Wilco (Greek Theater)

SEPTEMBER

9 - Paul Oakenfold, Underworld (Hollywood Bowl)
13 - Wolf Parade (El Rey)
14 - Cinematic Orchestra (El Rey)*
18 - Animal Collective (Henry Fonda)*
19 - New Pornographers (Henry Fonda)
20 - New Pornographers (Henry Fonda)
22 - Simian Mobile Disco (Echo)*
29 - Bright Eyes (Hollywood Bowl)*

OCTOBER

13 - Devendra Banhart (Orpheum)*
17 - The Black Lips (Glass House)
28 - Final Fantasy (Troubadour)* - Possible Beirut appearance?

* - Extra enthusiasm
% - Call them what you will, but the New Rave/dance-rock fads are good for dancing if nothing else

Mocking the Good Book

2007-06-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

Given a million monkeys, typing for a million years, you'll eventually produce the Bible.

The enterprising gents publishing the The Markov Bible have such many monkeys in their employ; and at a click, those monkeys will immediately produce an attempt at a book of the Bible from both the Old and New Testaments.

The whole operation is really quite astounding; the warehouse housing all those monkeys must be gigantic. And the noise! The clacking of those typewriters surely deafens. But applause to its creators, the Markov Bible will be the version of choice for my Sunday School class.

This excerpt from a reproduction of Genesis shook me so:

And the flesh instead of the men that he said, Drink, my sons of Bethel, and the flock, and thou wilt thou shalt bear upon Jacob said unto Abraham, and he Seas: and pursued after their victuals, and in the stone was good and daughters. And Rebekah to rule the smell of Abraham in the morning were eight hundred and Amraphel king of the earth, and there at the Philistines had said unto the angel with thee; for nought? tell thee a son, God Almighty bless me.

Truly remarkable.

Copyright Laws and Why You Should Give a Shit

2007-06-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary by Danish filmmakers following the controversy over American and international copyright laws. There are interviews with Girl Talk, a bigwig from the MPAA, founders of The Pirate Bay and DJ Danger Mouse. Altogether, the film is fair to both sides of the argument, although it's clear that the filmmakers lean toward the pro-sampling/pro-Creative Commons side.

The film itself is stylish and well-done, with footage of international experts lucidly explaining the history and significance of the copyright issue. In less than an hour, the documentary takes you to Girl Talk's Pittsburgh, The Pirate Bay's Sweden, etc. And it gives you a fascinating look into how technology can boost the creative licenses and freedoms of people, when it's used responsibly and collectively. The possibilities of Creative Commons and digital technology are exciting to say the least (if you don't know what Creative Commons is, the movie explains).

Best of all, the movie is free. You can stream it or download it through BitTorrent. Click here for the official site.

Jane Fonda (literally) on Colbert

2007-06-20T01:30:00.002-07:00

Jane Fonda was on The Colbert Report recently, and she spent the entire interview sitting on Colbert's lap. Poster girl for the counter-culture men of the '60s, she's now 69 years old and still able to render men helpless. If you watch closely, Colbert's nervous, starstruck and thinking about the wife back home. But he knows that one does not just simply ask Jane Fonda away. It's amusing to see the usually well-composed Colbert unable to stay in character.

In the end, I think Fonda was the one who fulfilled her fantasies. Colbert is a young, handsome liberal comedian-pundit, and no one can deny that the way he handled last year's White House Correspondents Dinner was sexy.

Click here for video.

Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl

2007-06-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

I couldn't believe it, but the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem are touring together in the fall. On September 20, they'll be playing at the Hollywood Bowl, only adding to the awesome lineup of shows that the Bowl has for the coming months (The Decemberists, Band of Horses and Andrew Bird are playing on July 7; Bright Eyes is playing on September 29).

Without question, I'll be there for both September shows.

Justice - †

2007-06-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

In 1999, Parisian house duo Daft Punk released their sophomore album, Discovery, to a rapidly growing fan base. Part-club and part-down-tempo relaxation music, Daft Punk's records sold in the thousands, eventually reaching the 1.8 million mark by 2003. As a result of their success, Daft Punk eventually became a driving force for French dance music, causing much fanfare throughout Europe and even the U.S.

Meanwhile, in Rome, an ailing Pope John Paul II, famous as "The Pope for Youth," confided to his closest advisers that he would like to see the Catholic Church redeem the souls of the many youth of Europe that the church had lost in membership over the past several decades. The Roman Curia, after months of deliberation, decided to pass on the Pope's vision onto the Society of Jesus. In 2000, the Holy See commissioned the Jesuit order to initiate a plan to penetrate the very center of youth culture. Foreseeing the potential and efficacy of music and dance culture, the Pope approved top-secret plans to redeem the lost youth of Europe.

For this purpose, the Jesuit order decided to form and finance a dance duo similar in style and sound to Daft Punk, a group that it saw as a powerful force in influencing the lives of young people. Two young Jesuits, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, were chosen to man Justice, the electro dance duo that has gathered significant hype over the past year.

In a symbolic and fitting gesture, Justice released their debut album †, an aptly titled record that brings to life Pope John Paul II's vision long after his death. Today, Justice tours the world in search of souls to save. As of today, the band has redeemed over 2 million souls in Europe, Asia and North America.

In all seriousness, this record is good. There is a tendency toward repetition, but the sequencing of the songs and the late-morning, Benzedrine-fueled production make Justice probably the most exciting artists to come out from Ed Banger this year. "D.A.N.C.E." is arguably the best dance track of 2007, and the sampling on tracks like "New Jack" and "Valentine" give off disco and arena rock influences that are catchy and nostalgic -- in the vein of Ratatat, but grittier and less polished.

The album will be out in the states on July 10, 2007, but the leak is currently available on P2P networks.

Bitch and roast.

2007-06-17T10:04:00.001-07:00

If you want some candid writings about everyday annoyances and interactions, check out the best-of-craigslist postings. Here you'll find rants about religious solicitors, stupid resumes, clueless tourists, etc. And if you ever feel the need for a soapbox, go ahead and post your own rant too.

Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency

2007-06-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

I came across this site randomly. Truly serendipity. McSweeney's Internet Tendency is a humor and literature website hosted by McSweeney's publishing house. Its features are a riot, parading around a hilarity absurdly sophisticated. Titles as "Nostalgic Remembrances of Things That Haven't Happened Yet" and "Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mails and Discovers That His Bid for Tenure Has Been Denied" leave the reader thoroughly amused through their tongue and cheek wit. "Submission Guidelines to our Refrigerator Door" is believable. I promise. In fact, I am convinced my submission of a crudely drawn portrait of Dorian Gray will surely win a spot on their corporate refrigerator. It's not a robot monkey and that's important; it's a rule: no robot monkeys on their coveted refrigerator door.

Oh, and "Jean-Paul Sartre, 911 Operator" makes me squeal with pleasure. Jean-Paul is a little aphoristic bitch as he rattles off a mix of existential truisms in French and English, while the caller approaches his doom. The article is a glorious philosophical romp.

Go. Go now to McSweeney's! They're in a spot of financial trouble and need your help. They're auctioning off a bunch of stuff on eBay.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Andrew Bird to perform tonight on Conan

2007-06-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone's favorite whistling violinist will be on NBC tonight with everyone's favorite tall, gangly redhead. Andrew Bird will be performing a song off of his new, well-received (and Forest Fire staff-adored) Armchair Apocrypha.

The show starts at 12:35 on NBC, right after "that guy with the chin". Conan's other guests will be Kate Sedgwick and John Cena, so I suggest that you watch the monologue and intro sketch and skip the interviews, unless Conan decides to actually wrestle John Cena. In fact, Conan wrestling Kate Sedgwick would be equally amusing.

New Look

2007-06-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

Our template has changed and we have the cover of our current issue in the sidebar to the left.

I (Jonathan) am going for a minimalist, yet elegant style. Always subject to popular opinion, though.

Tell us what you think.

Pete Townshend Musical to Premiere in New York

2007-06-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

Now, I enjoy listening to random obscure bands just as much as the next person, but I still very much get off on the great monoliths of classic rock stardom. My favorite of these rockstars, The Who's amazing Pete Townshend, is ready to wow audiences with a musical adaptation of his blog novella, The Boy Who Heard Music*. The novella was written in between September of 2005 and February of 2006 and was the basis for The Who's latest album, Endless Wire, their first original material in 24 years since their shoddy release, It's Hard (affectionately called "It Sucks" by many fans).

"The Boy Who Heard Music" will have its premiere dates on July 13th and 14th at Vassar College's Powerhouse Theater in Poughkeepsie, NY. The show will feature new material from the Towser, as well as songs from Endless Wire and his solo efforts, Lifehouse and Psychoderelict.
The effort was originally supposed to be a film starring Johnny Depp as Ray High, Townshend's semi-autobiographical character, under the direction of famous Python Terry Gilliam, but no serious plans appear to have surfaced. It's unknown if the show will have additional performances.
As of now, Townshend and The Who are busy with a European tour scheduled to end on July 9th in Helsinki, two days after headlining the Roskilde festival in Denmark.

*It seems that something is up with his site, so I've used the Internet Archive to sort of give readers a source of the materials. The PDFs are wonky, don't try them. You can navigate if you're at least a bit tech-savvy and can click on the "Archive" links at the right of the page. I'll update this if Towser's web hosting improves in the next few days.

Milk

2007-06-10T17:39:00.000-07:00

The milk has gone warm, left on the porch for near an hour.
The flies have got to it, too,
And I don't suppose the dog wants it.

I'll bring it in, anyways--perhaps put it in the fridge for later.
Nope.
There's last week's bottle--that too, left on the porch.

I should have the milkman deliver it some other time: later, as the morning carries on.
On habit, I don't get up before nine--late nights at the steel foundry and all.
Oh, but how I do enjoy my milk. Cornelius does too. Gruffy ol' dog. Needs it for his bones.

Wonder if the Times is out on the lawn.

Forest Fire is out, and we're waiting for summer

2007-06-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already, please pick up a copy of the new Forest Fire. We'll be out for the summer, but we're still looking for writers, artists and designers. We're especially in need of someone who can run marketing/PR for us. What can we promise? The chance to spread the next big zine on campus and plenty of love from the staff.

It's coming.

2007-05-30T13:26:00.001-07:00

The new issue of Forest Fire (with new layout) will be out this Monday June 4. We'll be passing it out on Ring Road, so we hope to see you there.

A short summary:

The Clinic
Ikey Owens
Vietnam
Gypsies
Coffee
Swedish music
Chamillionaire

Also, the final issue of Jaded is out and looks awesome. Pick up a copy of the yellow/black issue on Ring Road as well.

EDIT: It will be out Tuesday, June 5.

She'll sing for you, if you listen.

2007-05-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

Let me introduce to you, Basia Bulat. She has an awesome name and currently resides in Montreal, Canada where she works and records with her band. Her newest album Oh, My Darling was released April 30th. No love for America, though, as it was only released in the UK and Europe. Well, there are always imports and Basia Bulat is definitely worth checking out. Here's why.

Basia possesses strong and smooth folk/country vocals along with pretty solid song writing. I absolutely love her song, "I Was a Daughter." Her voice wavers with perfection between notes, low and high. A warm piano accompanies the melody. The clapping that kicks in at the intro is great and makes the song instantly fresh. And don't forget about the strings - layers and layers of them. Overall, it's a well-crafted and well-produced song and you can go check it out at her myspace.

She is currently touring in Europe. Let's hope she receives more recognition from the States so she can come around here and sing her beautiful songs to us.

Self-congratulatory pricks get off on each other

2007-05-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

The two world leaders enjoy an intimate moment.

Tony Blair and George W Bush have reaffirmed the decisions they took over war in Iraq and said their countries would stay united against terrorism.

The British prime minister is on a final trip to Washington before stepping down at the end of June.

The two men - close allies for six years - praised each other's record.

Mr Bush called the British PM "a clear, strategic thinker". Mr Blair said the US president had been "unyielding, unflinching and determined".

After congratulating each other on a job well done against global terrorism, the two leaders entered Mr. Blair's private jet and circle jerked each other.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Run, it's the po-lice!

2007-05-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

On May 1 (May Day), Los Angelenos held a peaceful demonstration throughout the city in support of immigration reform. In MacArthur Park, however, things turned sour. Police forces arrived, disrupting what was a non-violent protest filled with women and children. They came armed with rubber bullets and tear gas, and shots were indiscriminately fired into the crowd, regardless of the women and children present.

I was at last year's May Day protest along Wilshire, and I remember it being full of good will. People came to support one another, and for the first time, I felt a great solidarity within a crowd. It was beautiful. No one got hurt, as far as I know. But when trigger-happy cops arrive to disrupt things like this, it pisses me off.

My initial reaction was to say "Fuck the police!" and blast up NWA, but I know that the cops who shot into the crowd probably didn't receive proper training or preparation (but that's just speculation on my part). I blame former Deputy Chief Cayler "Lee" Carter Jr. for not doing anything to hold back his men. Mr. Carter decided to retire instead of being demoted from his position.

Allowing the firing of non-lethal bullets (which still hurt) into a crowd filled with unarmed women and children? Not taking responsibility and hiding away in retirement? I nominate Mr. Carter for the biggest idiot and coward of the week. How many more fuck-ups are in charge at the LAPD?

LAist has an update on the LAPD protest that will take place in Los Angeles today. Mayor Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Bratton will also be present. Click on the link to see actual video footage of what went down on May 1. You'll notice the good feelings shared within the crowd at the start of the video. Then the police arrived.

On a lighter note, Elijah Wood will be playing Iggy Pop in a dramatized film about the punk singer. Too bad Elijah probably doesn't have a body that looks like a "piece of chewed-up wire."

Crooks and Liars

2007-05-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

After watching the documentary The Take in sociology today, I couldn't help but notice the resemblance between former Argentinian president-crook Carlos Menem and former U.S. president-crook Richard Nixon.

Crook #1

Crook #2

The former sold away his country to privatization and economic ruin. He also has a former Miss Universe as his baby's mama. The latter sold his soul to Satan. He died miserably (probably).

P.S. In other news, Jerry Falwell died recently in a Virginia hospital after being found unconscious in his office. This news will either delight, upset, or disinterest you.

Letters

2007-05-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

A boy sat upon a green knoll under the shade of an old oak tree, enjoying a cool, juicy orange he had fetched from the house. His mother bought a bag of oranges from a Mexican man, who was selling them from the back of his beaten-up truck. The oranges came from a local grove in Oxnard. They were the sweetest, and had the fewest seeds.

The summer was full, and saturated the home's landscape. The grass was lush and green; the flowers, freshly planted (the soil smelled new and moist), were prismatic. The two oak trees--one on the knoll, upon which the boy reclined, the other beside the driveway--extended their shade over the majority of the lawn. The porch was adorn with hanging ferns and potted plants; twisting morning glory and old ivy--it made the home look ancient, but the boy's father hated the asphalt and concrete of suburban sprawl.

A bee buzzed past, and the boy gave a start. He moved off the knoll and into the house, where his mother was peeling carrots and potatoes for lunch. He flew left up the stairs, with all the childish glee of his age. The carpeted steps groaned, as he leaped every other step. He never "walked" up stairs; he bolted off each step. Fearing he may fall and hurt himself, the mother scolded him, but he was already at the top of the staircase.

The boy slowed to a dawdle, briefly perusing his father's CD collection abreast the wall. Along the way to his room, the boy would always select a CD--usually some classic rock band he had never heard of--and play it.

The door moaned as the boy pushed it open. He threw the CD into the player, and fell upon his bed to listen. Badfinger--not palatable. He switched it out for Beethoven, his favorite. Beethoven shook the boy with passion, every time. The boy pulled out his desk chair and sat. Drawing out his pen and paper from his desk drawer, he proceeded to pen letters.

This activity gave the boy the greatest joy, and indeed he lived for it. He had many pen pals from all over--two in Paris, one in Munich, one in Bari, and one in Athens--all of whom he took to be his only friends. Adept at calligraphy, he took special care to pen with beauty. He believed it expressed more. After hours of labor--he missed lunch--he ceased for dinner.

The boy awoke early in the morning to ready himself for school. He packed his books, an array of pens and pencils--always sharp--and white, unlined paper of the highest grade and quality. The teachers allowed him unlined paper, considering his condition; he believed lined paper to be crass. His lines were truer, finer, and more perfect than the other students. The teachers marveled over such neatness.

The bus took the boy to school every morning, save one day when his mother had to drive him. On the bus, the boy sat alone. With folded arms and a vacated expression, he looked down at the passing cars with no special interest. Nobody bothered him; nobody cared. Nobody talked to him; nothing could come of it. Nobody ever got close; nobody ever tried.

On this particular bus trip, however, a girl asked if the seat next to him was taken. The boy shook his head, and smiled a bashfully. She in return gave him a full smile. She introduced herself as Sabine. Sabine Deugot. But the boy did not, could not, reciprocate. He turned his attention back to the window.

The next morning, again, Sabine took her seat next to the boy. She gave a full smile and a note: "Why don't you like me?"
The boy folded his arms and buried his face, embarrassed. Confused, Sabine consoled the weeping boy.

And the morning after, the boy came with a letter written on his finest stationary. But she didn't take her seat next to him. He would get off at her stop and deliver the letter, during the trip home in the afternoon.

The boy walked sheepishly up the garden path, tucked the letter under the mat, and scuttled back to the public sidewalk. He'd walk the rest of the way home; it was no more than a mile. His mother would be worried sick; she usually waited at the bus stop for him.

His mother had called around. The other mothers couldn't say. But, as the boy walked up the driveway, the screen door gave a creak and his mother, whose expression read furious, but betrayed relief, leaned against the door frame. He wouldn't tell her of Sabine.

The boy was put away into his room. He didn't much feel like doing his letters; Sabine was on his mind. Where could she have gone? Would she receive his explanation--or would she understand? The boy fell asleep, but not out of volition. It simply overtook him.

She wasn't present on the bus. The boy, distraught, began to sob quietly beside the bus window. The din of the bus was loud and unyielding. Still, paper wads and voices sailed above the folded boy. Distressed, the boy ran up the aisle, off the bus. He'd have to walk a ways to get to Sabine's.

The letter was untouched. Then, quickly, the door was kicked open, and two men carrying a small child hurried down the walkway. There, wrapped in white linen sheets, was Sabine. She had a frightening pallor and erratic breaths. An ambulance broke hard in front of the house, and Sabine was loaded up in it. They came and went without once acknowledging the boy--gone within minutes.

He couldn't go to school or back home, so he climbed up and sat out on the veranda to wait for Sabine.

Hours past and the same two men returned. This time they took notice of him and made to shoo him off, but tears came to the boy and the men stopped. They asked, first, his name--no answer--then, why he was crying--his crying intensified. They mentioned Sabine and the boy's head jerked up, eyes washed out and red. His mouth quivered as if to cry once more, but the men quickly came to him.

Sabine had contracted rubella and had gone deaf. Her mother had arrived from Los Angeles as the news of Sabine's condition reached her. The mother was an actress. The two men, the father and the family doctor, allowed the boy to visit often. They found it odd that the boy would only come as Sabine slept, and only to place a letter beside her head on a pillow. Sabine would write back and have her father personally deliver it.

When she recovered, though still deaf, Sabine and the boy would make dates to the park and to the cafes. They were inseparable and always hand in hand. They smiled ceaselessly, pleased to sit and eat quietly together.

And on the bus, the boy would sit eagerly for Sabine; she'd take her seat beside him and bashfully lean in to kiss him on the cheek. The boy would blush red and Sabine would smile wide. She loved the boy. The boy loved her. Their love enfolded in letters and words; notes and sweet nothings.

On they rode the bus.

Film Review - Spiderman 3

2007-05-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

I arrived during the opening credits of Spiderman 3, only to find that the only remaining seats were in the first two rows of the theater. Inevitably, I had to watch all 140 minutes of the movie by panning my eyes from left to right to take in all the visuals. Also, the angle that I was sitting at made for an awkward perspective -- it was either the angle of my seat that made Tobey Maguire look at least ten pounds fatter or the actor's gained a few pounds since the last sequel. Either way, there were moments when I mistook Maguire for Bill Pullman. O.K., I digress.

Before you read, note that there are SPOILERS in the following review (so don't read if you have yet to see the film). If you don't want to read the spoilers, just scroll down and read a condensed version of this review.

Visually, Spiderman 3 is the most polished and spectacular of the trilogy. The $300+ million that went into the special effects results in Spidey at his most acrobatic, quickest and slickest. Watch the first fight scene between Spiderman and Harry Osborn, and you'll see that the special effects and choreography go beyond tired, old rehashes of slow-motion Matrix sequences.

There's a lot more to like about the film than just the special effects. Like the previous Spiderman films, the third one offers up plenty of the same endearing character development, this time with Peter Parker's ever-growing hubris. Like all tragic heroes, this same hubris will later come back to bite Spiderman in the ass. A bite in the form of Venom, Sandman and a fallout with long-time sweetheart Mary Jane.

For fans of the Spiderman comics, director Sam Raimi drops a few treats, like a brief, light-hearted cameo by Spiderman creator and comic book legend Stan Lee.

But with all of this aside, the Spiderman franchise shows signs of aging in the third film. The moral tales of the previous two films come across as forced and unconvincing in the third. This is most apparent when the oh-my-god-how-old-is-she-now Aunt May happens to drop by Peter's apartment just to deliver a few wise words on forgiveness and conveniently leaves after a visit that lasts no longer than ten minutes. The first film taught us that "with great power comes great responsibility," a quote that is made all the more powerful by Spiderman's early struggles with his powers. The second film was unexpectedly cathartic, giving Peter Parker a more human quality by allowing him to deal with his thankless, dangerous job of New York City superhero. The third film, however, has difficulty carrying that same emotional weight throughout the film.

Unfortunately, Spiderman 3 is plagued by its own ambition of featuring three potentially interesting villains (or "antagonists," since the Spiderman films have a sometimes-sincere, sometimes-annoying habit of trying to humanize its villains) and trying to piece together a whole film out of it. This ambition falls short. To develop the backstories and personalities of the characters like the first and second films did for Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus, the filmmakers would've had to make a fourth film (à la the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films).

To tie in three villains and an ongoing romantic struggle between Peter Parker and Mary Jane, the film uses impossible coincidences to drive the film forward. A symbiotic alien happens to land in the same forest where Peter and Mary Jane are enjoying a romantic night (the symbiote later attaches itself to Spiderman, leading him to have refreshing -- more on that later -- personality and superpower changes). Flint Marko, the runaway convict that killed Ben Parker (Peter's uncle), happens to land in a pile of radioactive sand while giving chase to the cops. Conveniently, he becomes the malformed Sandman, a vengeful supervillain bent on robbing a few banks to pay for the operation of his poor, sickly daughter.

Basically, Sandman is like John Q, but with superhuman strength and less likability. At the end, Spiderman and Sandman come to some contrived level of understanding, ultimately leading to Sandman floating away through the cityscape, never to be seen again. Bullshit! The guy causes probably millions of dollars in damage and injuries and Spiderman lets him go, expecting him to be reformed and pacifistic? It's not clear if the Sandman is eventually able to save his daughter. It's not even clear whether or not the Sandman has truly renounced his ways. He apologizes for "accidentally" killing Ben Parker and floats away after having been forgiven by Spiderman.

As for Venom, Thomas Haden Church plays a great foil to Peter Parker as Eddie Brock, a rival photographer who is everything that Peter isn't: egotistical, well-dressed, dishonest and morally flexible. The character of Eddie Brock also allows Sam Raimi to have a lot of fun with more of the humorous, tongue-in-cheek pop narrative that pervaded the second film. Peter Parker's reformation into a smooth-talking chauvinist (a transformation made possible by the alien symbiote) is refreshing and well-played. This part of the film is well-done in that it's as enjoyable for the audience as it looked fun for actor Tobey Maguire to play.

Most unconvincing of all, James Franco reprises his role as Harry Osborn, the still-bitter, still-creepy rich kid who's bitter that his father got his ass handed to him by Spiderman. In the first fight scene with Harry, Spiderman again kicks ass and lands Harry in a hospital bed. Harry suffers temporary amnesia and is unable to remember the events leading to his hospitalization. In other words, he doesn't remember anything about the Green Goblin or why he's mad at Peter Parker/Spiderman in the first place. Then later on in the film, for no apparent reason, he regains his memory and his anger. He and Peter Parker fight again, only to have his ass handed to him again. As if the audience wasn't already tired of this whiny, weakly trust fund baby, Harry vows to kill Spiderman after having half of his face burned away. But, again in another moment of impossible convenience, Harry's butler arrives to tell him that Yes, your father was the one that killed himself and therefore you shouldn't be such a self-loathing jerk-off.

After almost two whole films of desiring revenge and plotting to kill Spiderman, Harry Osborn realizes the error of his ways and decides to join Spiderman to help save Mary Jane from Venom and Sandman (who by convenience decided to work together to kill the web-crawling superhero). Shit! All it took was for some butler to intervene and tell the poor sap the truth about his father. Where was this butler in the last two films? Why did he decide to stay silent?

Another note about Venom and Sandman. Their collaboration is merely the product of narrative convenience. They have no true parallels, no common goal. They might have a common enemy, but that's not very convincing, especially since all Sandman wants to do is to save his bedridden daughter from dying. The only reason they're together is because the filmmakers needed to end the film with one epic battle between Spidey/Harry and Venom/Sandman. And even then, the two villains don't effectively collaborate and ultimately and obviously lose the battle. It's pretty underwhelming for what's supposed to be a kick-ass battle.

The sappiness behind Sandman's backstory is cringe-worthy. As always, the filmmakers tried to get the audience to feel sorry for the villain. "Look, he's not that bad. He just wants to save his daughter!" Please. If he really wanted to save his daughter, he wouldn't have caused loss of property and life to a whole section of downtown Manhattan. And after that, we're expected to forgive him and let him go like Spiderman did? That's criminal negligence.

Since this review is going on for much too long, I'm going to cut it short and give this final, condensed review.

SPOILERS end here. Condensed review is below.

Special effects/fight scenes = good
Character development/plot = bad
Peter Parker's struggle with his Superego and Id = interesting and worth watching
The continuous need for the filmmakers to moralize their audience = getting annoying and old

Festival d'Avignon

2007-05-05T00:58:00.000-07:00

It's a little late to plan for le Festival d'Avignon, perhaps possibly the original arts festival. But it's nice to think about for the near future (I hope). Starting July 6 thru the 27th, this little French village will be host to music buffs, artists, writers, bohos, actors, dancers and the like.

I don't know much about it except really what I've read from my french book. The official website is difficult to navigate, since it's partly in French (although some of us are okay ahah). Anyway, check it out and we'll go next year!!!

To France!: http://www.festival-avignon.com/index.php?r=1

Let them eat CAKE!

2007-05-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

No, not Marie Antoinette. Let the feminists eat Cake.

After a three-hour rampage of wikipedia and google, I found this not-so-appetizing, third-wave feminist group called CAKE based in New York and San Francisco. They were founded by two NYU and Columbia graduate women seeking to free the sexually repressed women of the nation (or at least the ones ready to get down and dirty).

However, their strong-willed feminist ideals seem to fade behind the disco lights and platform boots of the CAKE promotion parties. Every month, CAKE throws these lavish, risque, pornstar-worthy galas where women are free to dress like prostitutes and kiss one another--without worrying about tomorrow. Of course, these sex-positive feminists find it liberating, while the male spectator feasts on asses and tities. But who can blame them? They're here to support feminism.

If you read the wikipedia entry on sex-positive feminism, it sounds, well, liberating. They believe in equality in and out of the bedroom, "raunch culture", and female sex subjects (not objects). But this doesn't mean Baby Spice sex appeal. We're talking more like Posh Spice: not subtle and not pink.

But when feminism turns into an overdone excuse to get naked, it overshadows the daytime feminists in office. How can a woman, to quote Ludacris, "be a lady on the street and a freak in bed" AND a freak in the club at the same time? I don't see how Striptease-a-thons are supposed to empower women (unless they're getting paid, which they're not). Otherwise, it's just another hoe-down to me.

Hungry for Cake?: http://www2.cakenyc.com/

When I'm ready.

2007-05-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

If you're tired of the hype around Beirut and would like to read a blog entry/article about Zach Condon and his music that isn't fawning, check out Stu Sherman's "The Triumph of Musical Tourists" at PopMatters. It's a well-researched piece on how Beirut's music is disingenuous and inauthentic. While I can see where Sherman is coming from, I take issue with some of things he writes, especially toward the end of the essay. I'll have a response sometime during this weekend, whenever I have the energy.

Right now, I'm recovering from watching Spiderman 3, which is the topic of yet another blog entry in the very near future (most likely tomorrow).

Film Review - The Shape of Water

2007-05-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, a few of us at Forest Fire went to a film screening at the OCMA. The museum screened Kum-Kum Bhavnani's The Shape of Water as part of its Cinema Orange film series.

Here's an excerpted synopsis from the film's website:

The Shape of Water is a feature documentary that tells the stories of powerful, imaginative and visionary women confronting the destructive development of the Third World with new cultures and a passion for change. The film takes us to Senegal, Israel/Palestine, Brazil, and India where these new cultures, alongside old traditions, end female genital cutting (FGC), offer innovative forms of opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and show how women are spearheading the implementation of renewable resources and rainforest preservation by tapping trees to obtain rubber. The Shape of Water also takes us to a vast co-operative of rural women in India (SEWA) and, in the foothills of the Himalayas, to a farm, Navdanya, set up to preserve biodiversity and women’s role as seed keepers. By interweaving images, words, and the actions of Khady, Bilkusben, Oraiza, Dona Antonia, and Gila The Shape of Water offers fresh and nuanced insights into the lives of women in the Third World.

While the movie presents plenty of fascinating stories and people, especially the Senegalese women fighting against FGC, we left the screening thinking that the film fell flat. It was good for what it was -- a film chosen by the Newport Beach Film Festival to congratulate themselves on how egalitarian and progressive they are, all the while catering to a mostly rich and probably white viewership. Several of the issues featured on the film are old news, and none of them are covered with enough detail to truly send a powerful message. We're offered no call for intervention or action, and we are simply expected to see the film and feel good about how noble the women are.

Up to that point, I give the film credit. However, the editing of the film results in a fractured and frustrating viewing. The movie cuts between different women and regions of the world, constantly switching back and forth from one story to another. By the time Bhavnani piques your interest with one segment, she's already moved on to another, giving you little time to really let the matter settle in.

If Bhavnani wanted to make a memorable and affecting film, she should have easily limited her focus to just three women, giving them enough coverage to let their characters and struggles develop. Instead, we get a rather dissatisfying collection of vignettes that are poorly ordered and presented, qualities that make the film cohesively boring and unfocused (which is unfortunate, since all the women in the film have engaging accounts and backstories to share).

There are plenty of moments in the film that allow for a degree of real human drama, especially with the Indian women protesting the flooding of their homeland. I enjoyed these accounts, and if anything, the film could serve well as a Sunday-night television documentary. But to have it screened as a highlight of the Newport Beach Film Festival is a disappointing reflection on the festival's part.

P.S. On a completely unrelated note, I was at a A.O. Scott (New York Times film critic) lecture on campus one night, and there, some old man (one of those white-haired South Orange County yacht-club types who ride around in their Porsche Boxters with Hawaiian shirts on) commented on how degrading modern film has become, citing television shows like House as an example of how dumbed down today's audiences are. At this point, I looked over to his side and wanted to ask him how House had anything to do with modern film since it's obviously a T.V. show.

The guy probably felt clever and smug over taking a slight jab at something he clearly finds himself feeling superior over. Earlier that night, while asking the first of several pretentiously asinine questions, the same man took the liberty to let Mr. Scott and the rest of us know that he was part of the Newport Beach Film Festival committee, implying that his opinions were worth something and therefore important.

Well, guess what? His committee sucks. It chooses boring documentaries like The Shape of Water that makes use of clichéd, impressive-sounding metaphors that would impress anyone with exposure to a 9th grade honors English course.

P.P.S. I like House.

Genre: Documentary
Language: English
Runtime: 70 minutes

The White House sends their best.

2007-05-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from this BBC article about Bush vetoing a bill that pushes for troop withdrawal by next year.

Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of a speech in which Mr Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq over, standing beneath a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished". Speaking before the signing of the bill, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino accused the Democrats of cynically delaying the move so it would coincide with the anniversary for political gain.

"It's very disturbing to think that they possibly held up this money for the troops and the troops' families and the resources they need to try some PR stunt on this day," Ms Perino said.

This is proof that White House spokespeople are paid solely to rebut any opposition at a third-grade level. Accusing Democrats of "cynically delaying" the bill is like the twat in your third-grade classroom responding to an insult with an "Oh, yeah? Well, you're fat!"

It's very disturbing? What's more disturbing is that she seems to have no problem with prolonging the deaths of more American soldiers.

Here's a photograph of Ms. Perino.

Notice the hot blonde factor. While I personally don't find this kind of woman attractive, I can imagine quite a few undersexed journalists drooling over her at a press conference.

Tony Snow couldn't shake off the press well enough, so the White House decided to go for sex appeal. Clever.

While Googling for more information on Perino, I noticed that my Google search bar on Firefox listed "dana perino hot" and "dana perino pictures" as popular search hits. The White House wins.

Feist in L.A.!

2007-04-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

The Wiltern. Friday, June 29 at 8:30pm.
Tickets go on sale starting May 5 on ticketmaster.

Back from the desert, alive and well

2007-04-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

We've come back from this year's Coachella and are ready and willing for another one next year. More posts coming up this week.

From Baghdad to Irvine

2007-04-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, the O.C. Register is a skeleton of a newspaper, but they have an article on the UCIndie benefit concert (which is tonight) and one of its organizers, Nick Masellis, who is a Iraqi war veteran and student at UCI. Click here to read.

The District is out.

2007-04-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

The first issue of The District has been on stands for almost a week now. Pick up a copy if you're in the Long Beach area. It's looking pretty good.

Check it out here.

Bad feminism.

2007-04-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't read the book (The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine), the author's credentials almost make me want to read it. Former Yale graduate and current UCSF neuropsychiatrist, one would assume she knows what she's talking about. Then I look over the book description which goes like so:

"Louann Brizendine, M.D. is a pioneering neuropsychiatrist who brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and whom they’ll love. Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why

• A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000

• A woman remembers fights that a man insists never happened

• A teen girl is so obsessed with her looks and talking on the phone

• Thoughts about sex enter a woman’s brain once every couple of days but enter a man’s brain about once every minute

• A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can’t spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm

• A woman over 50 is more likely to initiate divorce than a man"

If this book is meant to introduce "groundbreaking issues" (Bookmarks Magazine), it seems a little inappropriate to justify the clichés above. I'm sure her target audience--the borderline homosexual fratboy who has not lived or the insecure girl who needs biological evidence that she is, indeed, better--may learn a thing or two about brains and women.

But overall, I'm sick of people trying to liberate women. They can already vote and own property. There's nothing in U.S. law that denies women of anything men have. Except for the draft, but would women want to be drafted? Is that not equality?

Some feminists overlook the advantages of a vagina and just advocate women's rights because it's easy. Anyone can do it. Like the Women in Black who just stand around in silent vigil wearing black, which looks more like a fashion cult than an activist group, it takes no effort.

In ancient Greece, women were denied the right to vote and own property. But they also denied sex in order to end war among the city-states. Now that's feminism I like.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma?

2007-04-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

I tried to write a post about New York band Vampire Weekend but failed miserably after trying to sound like I know a thing or two about music. The fact is, I don't. The best I can do is call something catchy and melodic, and that's usually the kind of pop music I like. This doesn't fare well for any ambitions I may have of entering the field of music journalism, but either way, I don't mind sharing the music I enjoy.

Vampire Weekend started in 2006 among four Columbia University undergrads. Since then, they've been busy playing gigs around New York City. With Paul Simon-esque pop melodies and African rhythms, they play the kind of irreverent indie pop that tony liberal arts college kids dance to.

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

For more songs and information, click here.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922-April 11, 2007)

2007-04-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

Today, the world lost a wonderful human being.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., author of such great postmodern works as God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions; Slaughterhouse-Five; and his most recent collection of essays, A Man Without a Country, died today of brain injuries caused by a fall he suffered a few weeks ago. He was 84 years old.

Now, some of you may have acquainted yourselves with Kurt through your high school years with Cat's Cradle. I discovered him through Breakfast of Champions, and it changed the way I looked at modern literature. It was a book that made me laugh and most importantly, made me think.

Vonnegut, arguably the 20th century's Mark Twain, was a brilliant satirist that discussed the themes of consumerism, metaphysical questions, pollution, politics, and the overall absurdity of American life and the "American Dream." His works and characters (such as Eliot Rosewater, Kilgore Trout, Dwayne Hoover and Malachi Constant) still resonate with us today. Vonnegut provided a double-edged approach to the idiosyncrasies of American culture and society: on the one hand, he presented the harsh, cynical view of society, but at the same time fostered a great sense of humanism and the belief in the strength of humans in the struggle to protect their world from destruction and dehumanization.

To me, and to many others, Vonnegut was a model, not only as a writer and a social critic, but as a human being. We may never see another author like him again, but we can only hope that his works will continue to inspire scholars and everyday people alike, and look beyond the normal conventions of everyday American life.

Thanks for everything, Kurt. We'll miss you.

An afterthought from Slaughterhouse-Five:

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."

Who doesn't want a Genius Grant?

2007-04-09T03:04:00.000-07:00

If you don't know what a MacArthur fellowship is, it's a reward given every year by the very wealthy MacArthur Foundation to several Americans who show great promise in contributing to the arts and sciences. Not only does receiving the award mean you're pretty brilliant, it also means you get a cool $500,000 to spend. Not bad. It's also the award that Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) from Little Miss Sunshine lost to a rival Proust scholar.

One of the MacArthur Fellows of 2006 was a narrative journalist, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, who wrote Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, a nonfiction novel following the lives of a poor Puerto Rican family from the Bronx. According to the MacArthur Fellows website, "Adrian LeBlanc is forging a new form of literary reportage and illuminating worlds little known and less understood." While I've never read any of LeBlanc's works, it's good to see her being nominated among developmental biologists, cosmologists, and physicians.

Click here for more information on LeBlanc and her works.

More on media deterioration: evolution?

2007-04-08T01:28:00.000-07:00

Less jobs for newspaper reporters and editors, less stories, and more deterioration of the already yellowing pages of your L.A. Times come naturally after Tribune Company privatizes. $8.2 billion at the mercy of Sam Zell puts him in the big, black chair of L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and others. Thus, when Sam Zell and his multi-billion dollar company take control, it'll be hard to generate honest, value-driven journalism when economizing is at Zell's best interest.

Not that journalism is entirely honest nor value-driven nowadays. Even Nick Madigan, staffing the Baltimore Sun and hosting Minding the Media on KCRW, describes the upcoming changes with great doubt.

"In newspapers, fewer reporters, smaller pages and shrinking budgets mean that you, dear reader, have less to read. If you care."

Is it the writers? Or the readers? I think it works reciprocally. Of course Madigan is going to scold KCRW listeners! Though subtle, and with the best interest for journalism in its entirety kept in mind, I was initially offended by that last statement.

But he has a point. While the newspaper industry is struggling to maintain readership, the internet and other alternative media news sources gradually earn more of an audience. When you have blogs like Boing Boing and, ahem, Team Forest Fire, catering to specific, A.D.D.-esque news, the wordy and ad-concentrated L.A. Times doesn't look too appealing.

But fear not! Journalism is not dead. It's just evolving, and newspapers are dying out. Thanks to natural selection, choosy news junkies naturally choose other news sources.

Please see KCRW's Minding the Media segment and Tribune's press release for more info.

4/11 Meeting

2007-04-07T22:39:00.001-07:00

The first meeting of spring quarter will be on Wednesday, 7:00 p.m. at Brisa Hall (Mesa Court) again. We will be discussing specific articles for the next issue, deadlines, magazine layout, and other miscellany. Please feel free to bring anything that you want to share or incorporate into the magazine (i.e. other publications, books, films, etc.). If you need more information about the meeting, email us at forestfiremag@gmail.com.

Kerouac wore Khakis

2007-04-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

I owe this blog two stories, which I promise will be up by the end of the weekend. My apologies for all of the delays; though I will offer you a brief post on something that has been annoying me.

I recall being younger (my exact age really eludes me, it could be anywhere between the ages of eight and thirteen, for all I know) and being in my car with my parents somewhere in Downtown Los Angeles. It's common practice there for many buildings to offer one of their sides as advertising space, and I'd always look around to see what new ads were being painted on the walls. This time, however, I saw an ad with this image:

At the time, I didn't think much of it (in fact, I recall writing in some mindless internet meme some years ago that I didn't even care for Jack Kerouac) but a couple of years in high school English can change your opinion on things quite drastically.

How a man who, along with his poet counterpart Allen Ginsberg (and others), defined a counter-culture could be in favor of using himself as a vehicle for selling Gap Khakis goes beyond my knowledge. Yet here stands Jack, twelve stories high on a building, advertising a trendy clothing label. Granted, the Beat generation never defined itself as being as anti-establishment as the later hippie generation did, though I doubt Kerouac would have approved of using himself as a poster child. Just take some time to think about it on your own.

Pro-pot Nadelmann and the Drug Policy Alliance

2007-04-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

According to good ol' NPR's interview with Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, legalizing marijuana is becoming more and more likely once the safety and comfort zone accepts the drug.

30-35%, a substantial minority, agree that marijuana should be treated like alcohol; while 70-75% believe marijuana should be decriminalized, which would remove the threat of jail. In New York, where Nadelmann is based, 45% of all arrests are for drugs, and 90% of these arrests are for simple possession of marijuana. Many in New York believe marijuana dealers and growers will somehow legalize like the prohibitionists and speakeasies of the 1920s.

Although there is much controversy and endless debate on the topic, don't let Ethan Nadelmann tell you otherwise. It will be decades before marijuana-goers will drive out (or smoke out) the squares. But then again, don't let me tell you otherwise.

The Drug Policy Alliance is non-profit organization whose main purpose is to end America's war on drugs, seemingly with a special focus on medical marijuana. We all know where they go for coffee. (Pictured above)

Campaign to Save the Environment

2007-04-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

Need a little green in your life? (That's trees and money)

Come to the informational meeting next Monday at 2pm in UCI's volunteer center. Interviews and applications immediately follow.

In the Campaign to Save the Environment, you'll be working with various organizations to promote global warming awareness, sustainability and other green causes. Click on the link for more information.

Marionettes

2007-04-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

If it wasn't already apparent enough, I came across another sordid example of how much of the cable news industry is a sham. Geraldo Rivera was on The O'Reilly Factor recently, discussing a news story reporting that two teenagers were killed by a drunk driver who happened to be an illegal alien. The two "pundits," from the beginning, speak to each other with rising hostility. There's no reasoned evaluation of the facts. No careful exchange of ideas and opinions. No one's learning anything, and as always, the argument ends in an impasse. Typical cable news bullshit.

For awhile, I've felt annoyed by O'Reilly as a human being. How could anyone be so black-and-white, so smug and cock-sure of himself? I've seen Disney characters with more dimensions than him. And then it hit me. Everyone's an actor, and no one is really as serious as they would like us to believe.

If it's not too painful, begin watching the video from the half-way mark, when O'Reilly and Geraldo start talking. It's Curb Your Enthusiasm-level improv comedy.

From the beginning, both sides immediately raise their voices. You can hear the preconceived hostility in how they slowly and surely progress into a full-fledged yelling contest. O'Reilly's a great actor. He can channel all of his frustrations and perversions into his character, even allowing his veins to pop during argument. He's a fucking method actor. As for Geraldo, he plays the indignant bleeding-heart pussy of the show. He's the foil to O'Reilly, but a rather poor foil at that.

As time runs out, notice how the two immediately calm down in unison. Their movements and emotions are synchronized. And as if the shouting match never happened, as if no feelings were ever hurt, the two smile and engage in light banter. At the end, O'Reilly wishes everyone a happy Easter.

Occasionally, the camera will focus on Geraldo's face as an advertisement for Geraldo at Large (another example of sensationalist drivel) appears. "Here, this clown has his own show too. You can catch him later at 8:00 p.m."

Now I think that O'Reilly and Geraldo might not be such miserable people. They're probably nice in person, when they're not playing their characters. And they probably don't take themselves as seriously as they do on their shows. Fox News is a great acting gig for them, and I have to give props.

In the end, programs like The Daily Show are about comedians making fun of comedians. Maybe they're all in on it and are having a good laugh at the audience, at all of us.

Jean-Luc Godard + Junior Boys.

2007-04-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is an insanely entertaining mashup of Godard's "Bande à part" dance scene and Junior Boys' "In the Morning".

Yeah, I should stop being lazy. I know I haven't made posts in a long while, but believe me, I've been listening to a lot of new music/bands in the past couple of days. An aural binge. So, be prepared for all the ear-pleasing tunes I shall share with you in the very near future.

Nina Simone's alive, and I know it.

2007-04-04T18:35:00.000-07:00

It's always nice to listen to remixes that live up to their originals or give new life to them. The Postal Service give Nina Simone a proper treatment in their remix of "Little Girl Blue," off Verve Remixed, Vol. 3, a compilation of verve remixes by musicians ranging from RJD2 to the Junior Boys. In the track, Simone's voice is slightly haunting besides Jimmy Tamborello's catchy electronic beats, but the combination makes for a great revival of an old classic. Imagine Nina Simone, emerging from whatever afterlife she's in, dusting off the microphone for an encore performance beyond the grave. The beat is infectiously catchy, with signature Postal Service blips and bloops gently propelling her voice. It's a remix that builds upon the original and doesn't sound cheesy. Even my roommate, who's a big west-coast gangster rap guy, was boppin' his head to the beat. The song is universal.

Nina Simone - Little Girl Blue (Postal Service Remix)

We're really sorry, but we're back.

2007-04-04T00:50:00.000-07:00

If you've ever seen Arrested Development, you might remember a running joke with George Michael parodying Charlie Brown whenever he's been let down. In one episode, Michael promises his son a camping trip. Characteristic of most of the fathers in the Bluth family, he tells him "Something's come up" and breaks yet another promise.

That's kind of how we feel about this blog. We promise pictures, videos, and entries. And we fail to deliver. As spring quarter takes off, the blog will see more activity. Seriously.

To start it off, I'll write a short run-through of our trip this past weekend.

Places You Should Check Out:

Burma Superstar - This place serves up fresh Burmese cuisine and caters to both vegetarians and meat-lovers. The food's flavorful and the vegetarian dishes are a great alternative to Boca Burgers and simple salads. Get the Vegetarian Samusa Soup, the Classic Burmese Chicken Casserole, and the Nan Gyi Dok. The kitchen closes in the afternoon and the place is busy during most of the day, so call ahead before you go.

Café du Soleil - We stopped by here in the afternoon for some coffee and lunch and found a place serving up fresh French cooking that's not too heavy or expensive. The organic coffee is served in nice cups and saucers, so you don't feel like you're being rushed in a coffeehouse assembly line of incoming and outgoing customers. Italian sodas taste fresh and aren't diluted with syrup. Get the open-faced sandwiches for a nicely presented and filling meal.

Café de la Presse - Located right beside the Chinatown gate, this French café has great coffee, food, and service. Foods run along the same lines as that of Café du Soleil, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The mochas contain chocolate that's directly made in the café, and the setting is both classy and unpretentious. You can pick up a copy of everything from the Jerusalem Post to SOMA Magazine near the bar, where stacks of magazines and newspapers from around the world are available for sale.

People You Should Meet:

DJ B-Love - We met Brian (aka B-Love) in the smoking lounge of the hotel we were staying at. He's been living in S.F. since '92 and has been on the DJ circuit for at least a decade. This guy's the coolest cat I've met in the city so far. He regularly DJ's throughout the city and will gladly talk to you about Clinton-era San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, music, and general city life.

People You Shouldn't Meet:

People Complaining about the Homeless - Every time I go to San Francisco, I overhear some assholes bitching about the homeless people in San Francisco. At the shopping center, in the bus, there's just no shutting up these folk. Usually, they'll make some snide remark along the lines of "San Francisco, California's trash dump" or "The only thing homeless people do is pick up trash" (these are real-life examples we've overheard). The rest of us can only roll our eyes or, if particularly compelled, give them a quick kick to the shins and a "Go back to Cupertino!"

My heart is there, high, on the hill, right down by the Golden Gate, 'cross the bay

2007-03-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

A few of us are leaving for San Francisco for the rest of the week. We'll try to post up pics and updates whenever Wi-Fi is available. Also, if anyone has recommendations for good (and not too expensive) eats and things to do, please share.

We're still here.

2007-03-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

The end of the quarter has had most of us busy and celebrating, but we'll be back to posting very soon. Ian has a write-up and pictures from the Daedelus performance in Pasadena and the Menomena concert at The Echo. We also have pictures and videos from the Beirut music video shoot, which we enjoyed a lot.

Blogging for cash.

2007-03-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Win a $1000 scholarship simply by blogging! The Progressive U challenges students to spend less time on Myspace and Facebook and more time on blogging (not that it's a chore really). Anyway, this is supposed to be a quarter-long challenge but it's not too late to register and blog away. Deadline is Apr. 15.

If you're interested, copy and paste: http://www.progressiveu.org/node/20441

Quotable quote: "Friends don't let friends waste their time on Myspace." - Progressive U
also similar to "Friends don't let friends get coffee at Starbucks." (unless it's finals week and it's the only place open ahh)

Beirut Music Video Shoot in L.A.

2007-03-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

Beirut's in L.A. right now, and they'll be filming a music video tomorrow. Extras are needed. Here's the email I got from the video's producer:

Thanks for your interest in helping us out with the music video for Beirut tomorrow! For those of you who were wondering if there's still room for you - there absolutely is. We're shooting a big party scene, so you're even welcome to tell as many people as you'd like. The more friends you bring, the more fun it will be. For those of you who don't have the details of the shoot yet: we'll be needing you from 4-7ish pm at 5610 Soto St. Huntington Park, 90255. Please wear all grey, if possible, and nicer clothes if possible as well. If you have any questions, please call the Production Coordinator, Justin, at 323.445.8974. Also, if you can, respond to this e-mail with your name and the names of anybody you'd like to bring along tomorrow. Thanks a lot, and we hope to see you tomorrow!

Contact jib0613@yahoo.com for more information.

We Forest Fire people will be there. Hope to see you too.

Smile. They demand it.

2007-03-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

About more than a year ago, some peeps from Laguna Beach one day decided to grab all their instruments and make it their goal to bring a little bit more happiness into the world. Mr. Sunshine and the Family Band (yes, that is their band name) is the result of this dream.

Their first released song "The Apple Parade" is glorious and damn near victorious. The cheery vocals, the upbeat melodies and the very danceable beat makes it feel like it's Summer all over again. Mr. Sunshine and the Family Band encourages you to go outside and enjoy the sun, smell the flowers and play with some kittens.

And feel damn happy about life.

Download the song.

Check out their site.

A Proper Introduction

2007-03-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

We're sorry to any readers who may have found this blog confusing or unfocused. We didn't properly introduce the purpose of this blog.

Here, you'll find our recommendations on music, film, food, events, etc. that aren't covered in our print issues. We'll also be posting up any interesting miscellany that we happen to come across, including things we feel are important to mention.

Updates on our next issue will also be available on the blog. Thanks for reading, and we hope that you'll check us out regularly.

Team Forest Fire, go go go!

Media Deterioration!

2007-03-18T23:56:00.000-07:00

Last week, NPR broadcasted a segment on the State of the News Media 2007 report. They say news sources are becoming less and less popularized. Even the internet, which is supposed to be the media's future, is losing popularity. Most of the problems that do arise, according to NPR, come from "diminished ambitions", shrinking audiences, increasing numbers of news source mediums, etc.

Tom Rosensteil, director of The Project for Excellence in Journalism who report this annually, said that more and more media sources are catering to a certain audience rather than maintaining the traditional "gatekeeper" role of the media. Thus explaining the increasing use of specialized news sources like ethnic magazines, podcasts, blogs, Democracy Now and even NPR.

It's not that people aren't interested in the news, it's about the trustworthiness of different news sources. Some people feel more active when they, themselves, go online and search what they want to hear.

For the NPR segment aired Mar. 12: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7859075
For Tom Rosensteil's commentary on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7854201
For the report: http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/index.asp

Also, Good magazine just published their Media Issue last month. You can access some of the articles online.

And though it's only my opinion...

2007-03-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

This impersonation of Bob Dylan is pretty funny.

"Yet another side of Mr. Zimmerman as envisioned by NYC's Post Show ensemble. Bob Dylan, the omnipresent Top-40 songwriting god, has never seemed more lucid."

Also, if you haven't checked out Dylan Hears A Who, seven tracks of "Dylan" reciting Dr. Seuss are available for download. Given both artists' eccentricities, the combination seems just right.

The Shape of Water

2007-03-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Free movie screening at the OCMA this Thursday at 7:30pm.

The film follows the daily lives of four women from Brazil, India, Jerusalem and Senegal. Narrated by Susan Sarandon and directed by Kum-Kum Bhavnani. Documenting third world women's rights activism, it's supposed to be "eye-opening" according to a male reviewer.

I'm going to see this despite my final the next day. So if anyone would like to come, I'm driving!

http://www.theshapeofwatermovie.com/index.html

Props to Miles.

2007-03-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Miles, our editor, who will be graduating and moving on to bigger and better things. He'll be writing for The District, Long Beach's new alt-weekly led by ex-OC Weekly editor Will Swaim. We're looking forward to your work.

While we continue on with Forest Fire, he'll be doing big things in the LBC. Fo' sho'.

New paper for Long Beach - LA Observed

A little bit of support for the kids back at home.

2007-03-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

I know a couple of high school youngsters back at Glendale, my old home. Sean Guerin, the front man of their band Transit State, seems to be absolutely in love with music and is constantly creating and experimenting with different sounds, each and every song conveying different emotions. Simply put, Transit State is full of potential. Their songs are just dense and layered with absolutely wonderful sound. They do achieve that poignant mellow indie-pop sound quite well. Crazy talented kids.

Hopefully, you realize I'm not trying to shamelessly plug a friend's band for profit in this blog.

I'm plugging in true potential. Talent.

Check out their site: Transit State

I love blogs.

2007-03-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

Bonjour les enfants. Je m'appelle Janelle.

There's actually a FREE concert this Saturday night. Ok Go and Common will be performing at LMU in Los Angeles. Just try to pretend you're an LMU student. I'm sure it won't be too challenging.

Third Post

2007-03-15T22:48:00.001-07:00

This is Ian. And this is the third post of the coolest blog ever.

The second post.

2007-03-15T22:42:00.001-07:00

Hey. My name is Tom. This is the second post. And my first.