I don’t give a shit about 80’s metal and this is still the best documentary I have seen all year. Hell it might be the best movie that I’ve seen all year. I just connected with these guys so much. It’s the reason I love documentaries, these are real people. They aren’t some characters thought up by writers. They have real problems, real emotions, and real heart.

Through the movie you see how much promise and success they had back in the beginning and then they just kind of went nowhere, but they never gave up. Now it’s 30 years later and they’re still trying to make it. The movie focuses on the lead singer and drummer of Anvil. The lead singer ‘Lips’ is the one in the band who won’t let the dream die, he works at a catering company and takes vacation time to play shows. There are people in his life that you can see don’t share his vision and don’t really support him. But his girlfriend and older sister stick with him no matter what. Maybe that’s the part that really resonated personally with me? The other main character is the drummer, Robb Reiner (not the actor/director). He and Lips have this rocky ‘Brothers in Metal’ relationship that creates some intense emotional moments through out the film. When the ending comes you are so emotionally invested in this band that they really feel like family.

I cannot believe that this movie didn’t even get nominated for best documentary in the Academy Awards. The only close competition I would give it was The Cove and that for me is a distant second. Food Inc., the front runner for the award, was NOTHING compared to this movie. ANVIL doesn’t need flashy graphics or voice overs, it thrives on basic human spirit. The story of Anvil provided enough emotion for 10 movies.

If you have a heart and a dream, you will love this movie.

watch the trailer
buy the music

Schu-Review : 5 out of 5 Schus

*UPDATE*
Apparently this movie came out in 2007, but since I just watched it last week. I’m still calling it the best documentary of 2009.

Before

After

This blog redesign is still a work in progress, my strategy has been to get something out there that is functional and then add onto it piece by piece until it’s perfect. I’d always noticed that the posts themselves were a little plain, but I just couldn’t find something that fit the style. I thought it would be cool to have a sort of Apple-ish calendar poking out of the top of every blog post…. so that’s what I made. Doing these little things is a good way to keep my design skills fresh in between actual paying design jobs. Which are few and far between.

On the code side it’s not that much of a change, just added a fee floated divs here and there and a couple lines to the CSS file. I’ve pushed this template so far that I’m begining to think I should make an actual theme out of it and submit it to Wordpress.

Maybe I’ll get there eventually, but it’s not perfect yet.

So I’m sitting there in a spicy pickle induced nightmare in the bathroom at work when my phone vibrates. It’s an alarm I set to remind me to buy tickets for the Kevin Smith show at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue on 4/22. So I’m really in a pickle here… (rim-shot). I have 5 minutes to either finish my business and hope that there are not enough Smith fans in the DC area to sell out the show in 10 minutes or accelerate this mission and get back to my desk.

WWKSD?

I’m sure the new Kev would just light up a joint and twitter something irreverent, but I’m talking about the old Kev. The guy that maxed out his credit cards to make a movie about roof hockey and dick jokes. That’s my Edmonton Gretzky, a guy with natural talent who gets things done. So I pinched off that spicy mother and got back to the desk with minutes to spare. Got the tickets and am now writing this post.

Mission accomplished.

The band Them Crooked Vultures may have rocked my eardrums this year, but I don’t think I’m ready to drop $80 on a 3 poster set. That said, these posters rock. Who can’t love vultures dressed in fur lined Victorian trench coats???  These sir, are fancy birds. The monocle clad JPJ top hat vulture is my favorite. Maybe if I didn’t have to pay $20 to get them shipped from Australia…or someone could just buy them for me…

Here’s to hoping!

via OMG Posters

Long name, short number.

Beer Review:

This beer has a very long name, I mean seriously… it’s 7 words long and they aren’t short words either. It’s made in Williamsburg, VA which is about 3.5 hours from my house and always makes me think of being in the 4th grade.  The first thing I thought of when drinking this beer was how thick it was and how much I liked the smell. It has one of those sugary, molassassy, caramely barley wine tastes.  After the first sip you notice the bite of hops. A big bite like a gnarly dog made out of tiny green leaves. the hops sting the nostrils with their pungent aroma. It’s a formidible scent.  After you get that kick of hops the alcohol comes at the end and stomps you in the tounge again. The beer leaves your mouth feeling tight like it was once covered in shag carpeting then ripped out. But this is a good thing! This beer reminds you why your drinking American Craft Beer and not some macro-brew swill.

Bottle review:

Unlike the beer inside the bottle and label are pretty plain. Reminds me of visiting Williamsburg, the people get dressed up as colonial folk, but you’re still aware that they are a dentist from Newport News. The only fun element is the spark in the middle and the ridiculously long name.

Conclusion:

I like this beer. You’re not going to win any hipster friends with the bottle. But the beer inside is what counts anyway. Its a strong thick barley wine in a style that I think Patrick Henry would approve of.

4 out of 5 Schus

Delicious Spicy Pickles

I love pickles. Recently I’ve been indulging more in my addiction to vinegar soaked cucumber slices. I could sit down to watch some tv and eat an entire jar of dill spears. I don’t know if I should be proud of this, but I just love pickles.

I saw this jar in my local pickle isle and I knew that I had to have it. It tastes like pickles soaked in jalapeno juice, which if you don’t like then get the frak off my blog. It’s delicious. when you first bite into it you think to yourself “Man, this is such a waste, it tastes just like a regular pickle” then after a few seconds you start to taste that faint hint of jalapeno and you think… “Now that’s more like it, this is the pickle experience I paid for”. The after taste is ALL jalapeno juice, which is a bit overpowering, but if you eat another one real quick it lessens the pain.. until you run out of pickles and have nothing but your tears to quench the burning.

4 out of 5 Schus

The Bosetroopers

When I got the IPhone I stopped using the old Bose headphones. So I decided that I would paint them.  The only problem with this is that I’ve never been able to paint anything that looked good for longer than a week. I set these aside until I almost forgot about them, I pulled them out last night to take a look at them. Turns out I used water based paint in the airbrush and it had already started flaking off. So instead of taking my time and finishing the design with perfection, I descided to whip out the extra-fine paint pen and just freehand it. I took a bunch of pictures because I’m sure that in a week or so these are gointg to look like crap and I’m going to have to do a lot of work to start over.

Read more

Have you ever had one of those days… where everything goes right?

I know, people usually remember the opposites, but I guess the small things make me happy. I didn’t have a whole day, but I did have an amazing little stretch last night. I was meeting Laurel at her work before I went to play basketball with Travis and Nigel. When I turned right out of my street the car almost died because it was almost out of gas. Which happens a lot because there’s not a gas station that’s not located on the opposite side of a long light around me… and I’m a lazy bastard. So anyway the guy behind me almost runs into me because I’m going a little slow and then he gives me the brights… and I proceed to give him the finger… and the slow down… and the eat me… and pretty much just flip out. So this is how my good luck starts, with anger.

I get to the gas station, fill up, then decide to take care of my low air pressure in the tires. After filling those bad boys up I thought, well I still have a minute or so left from the air machine I might as well try to fill up this flat basketball, without using a needle… and a couple seconds later it’s done… I didn’t even know that was possible.. but it is. It’s like I’ve been lied to my entire life… all you have to do is lick the needle hole and then press down flat and hard.  This is a fact that the air needle industry doesn’t want you to know!  So after this little detour I’m a little late so I get going and on the way there I hit 5 or 6 green lights in a row. This includes two times when I was sure I was making a wrong turn only to come out in exactly the right place. So after a quick kiss from Laurel I was out playing basketball in Alexandria. Where I felt good, made a few open jumpers, and shockingly… I can still dunk.

(Bill Walton voice) – THROW IT DOWN BIG MAN!

It just surprises me how little it takes to make my day.

Old Man Winter

First off. I love Southern Tier beers. I’ve been sting that since my first sip of Unearthly Ipa. But I’ve come to think I should be saying,  I love Southern Tier beers that come in big bottles. I like almost every one that comes in the 22ounce bottles, but every time I get a six pack of ST, it’s just so… regular.

Its not like this is a bad beers, it’s just so ordinary. I mean it’s 100 times better than a keystone light, so lets not get crazy. It just has that bitter dry mouth hoppy flavor that is the signature of so many microbrews out there. I’m gonna rate it right in the middle, just average.

2.5 schus

Blue is the new black

So over my winter vacation I saw James Cameron’s Avatar in the theater. It’s one of the first times that I’ve ever seen a movie that I was just to totally engrossed in from start to finish. I never questioned any of the effects, I just assumed that everything was real. Which is a weird thing to say when a movie features 15 foot aliens who ride dragons. I went back and watched the Totally Rad Show review of the film and they went in to a little bit of the technology involved in capturing the performances of the actors. The Facial movements just really match the actors. Maybe I’m getting more complacent in my old age, but the story was told so well and the editing so tight that I never had time to question “How did they do this”. Which is really a testament to just how entertaining this movie is.

But the technology is what really got my mind working… Video cameras have become common place and the home editing software is on par with anything Hollywood had in about the early 1990’s. If you take 5 minutes to look on Youtube you’ll find some amazing videos that would have played on network TV in the past, but are done in someone’s free time, with home equiptment.  I’m not saying  everybody is making District 9 in their back yards, but some people are. Now that we’re on the cusp of the ‘3D cinema revolution’ I can see a future where home 3d recording will be feasible. You could just set up a couple of cameras in your house and then you’d have an exact 3d replica of everything. You could change the camera angle if you miss something or do some digital retouching on your 3d body scan. I can’t imaging what ’some people’ are going to to do with this.

I remember back when I was playing Quake or Fallout and I could download another character skin, so that I could have Johnny 5 sniping fools on a gravity jump. I’m Alive! I saw this trailer, it’s a mashup of ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Terminator’.  I thought, that would be a really cool movie actually, I wonder if something like that will ever get made… then I though who will play the parts. But like in the trailer, you really just want the original actors to play them. Then i got to thinking… in terminator salvation they have a CG Arnold attack, in XMEN they have a younger version of Magneto and Xavier, I mean for God’s sake they put marlon wayans head on a babies body for an entire freaking movie. But in all those cases you didn’t really buy into it all the way. But now, with Cameron’s tech out there what’s going to stop them from making a 3D character of an older actor, then having another actor act out the movie. This leads to all kinds of weridly exciting possiblities for REMAKES STARRING THE SAME ACTORS. If this gets popular then you can recast a movie AFTER you’ve filmed it. It can be seen as Brad Pitt’s face in the leading roll, but really it’s Tom Hanks behind the scenes doing the acting. And if we’re going down this path then why do movies have to star one person? They could advertise on the poster ‘Starring Leonardo DiCaprio or Jude Law’ and then you could switch between them on your personal movie glasses Then do they have to create another Oscar category for “Best Motion Capture performance” and then “Best Voice Acting” because they dont have to be the same person. Then you add in the amimatators who are basically left to clean up the data and make the non-humaniod characters move. then if they come out with motion capture suits for animals all those guys are out of business.

This leads to what I both hope for and fear most… Lucas remaking Star Wars with all CG actors and sets.

I think if Cameron is going to unleash this kind of technology on the cinema world then he should be responsible for teaching all the other directors how to do it.