Tonight we welcome Mister Joshua of the Chicago Workgroup for another go-round of the GGD party funtimes. Per usual, the party starts at 11pm and goes until 4 in the AM... And is FREE of charge all night long.
The rest of the month goes as follows:
03/10 - DJ's Pickel and Kool Hersh
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
In honor of one of my very favorite American actors currently working, I'm dutifully bringing to your attention the gloriously awesome Nic Cage as Everyone blog... It's really quite simple and self-explanatory: you click the link, have a browse, and laugh. A lot.
A few of my favorite examples below:
Nic Cage as Young Albert Einstein
Nic Cage as Turbo & Ozone
Nic Cage as Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi
... And there's a whole lot more where that came from. Additionally, since we're on the subject, check out this reel of highlights from Cage's awesomely unhinged and over-the-top performance in the remake of 'The Wicker Man'...
Tonight at Get Get Down we'll be welcoming DJ Weaponry of the Chicago Workgroup for the third installment of our disco-intensive 'Disco's Revenge' edition which runs on the fourth Wednesday of every month.
As for the coming month, we've got a gang of awesome guests in store for March:
03/03 - Mister Joshua (Dialogue Inc./Chicago Workgroup)
03/10 - DJ's Pickel and Kool Hersh
03/17 - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Featuring special guest Diz
03/24 - 'Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Featuring special guest Bald E.
03/31 - Diamonds of The Glamour
Tonight in Zebo's absence, we'll be doing something of a low-key Chicago Workgroup showcase for our 'Viva La Vinyl' edition of Get Get Down and will be featuring the selecting talents of Ross Kelly and Mister Joshua. The three of us will of course be playing nothing but wax all night long and the party will rage on from 11pm to 4am per usual.
The remainder of the month's programming is as follows:
Super rad news on the DJ front... My latest 'Kaleidoscope' mix has just been featured as the guest mix for esteemed local taste-maker Mister Joshua's Dialogue Incorporated monthly radio show.
Those who've been following Dialogue Inc. for the past year and a half or so know that the radio show is always, consistently full of all kinds of interesting selections from across the musical map. Additionally, Mister Joshua is always providing a sharp literary voice to complement the selections and frames the music in an always interesting context with each new month.
It's with great disappointment I report that our guest for tonight's edition of Get Get Down, Jesse Jamz from NYC, will not be making it tonight due to the weather issues we're all currently experiencing... However, Zebo and I will of course be holding it down as we ever so capably can and the party will rage on, as it always does, until 4 in the AM.
You know what to do about it.
The remainder of the month's programming is as follows:
On Monday March 1st we'll be hosting our 11th Bad Meaning Good event at The Burlington and will be showing the 2nd of Andy Sidaris's "Triple B" action features; the infamous 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii'. You can read my Bad Meaning Good case study on 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' here.
Here's some additional info about the film as well:
'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' on IMDB.
'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' at All Movie.
... And here are some choice screenshots on the French site Nanarland - Which, though I don't speak or read French, appears to be a similarly-minded website with regard to trash cinema in general.
Also, and again, thanks to all of you who made it out last week for 'The Apple'. I think we'd all agree it was a DAMN good time and I, for one, am super excited for the next go round!
More news to come...
In the meantime, check out this choice skater death sequence from the film:
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
From 1985-1998 Andy Sidaris directed 12 movies known as the "Triple B" collection (short for Bullets, Bombs, and Babes); a series of light hearted, budget level and pseudo-softcore/sleeze, action B-movies. 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' (1987) was the second of the series and is, true to "Triple B" form, full to the brim with gratuitous nudity, campy dialog, breasts, explosions, off-road vehicles, breasts, recognizably late-80's neon attire, Playboy playmate "actresses", breasts, sleezy drug traffickers, breasts, laughably ridiculous props, breasts, and um... Breasts. This thing was shamelessly and squarely aimed at the video rental and late-night cable markets and it comes loaded with the kind of extremely high volume of per minute stupidity and low-budget filmmaking daftness that you'd expect from both similarly minded films of its era and from the series at large.
The story is about Donna and Taryn (played by Sidaris regulars Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton respectively), two oft-naked but always scantily clad cargo delivery babes who, while on duty, are incidentally made aware of a clandestine drug and diamond smuggling operation when they spot a diamond drop-off delivered by a remote controlled helicopter. With a portion of the diamonds in tow, they avert the baddies for whom the shipment was intended and opt to call in a pair of muscle-bound, DEA-working bros to help dispatch the drug ring and put a stop to the criminal syndicate plaguing the Hawaiian streets. It ain't all smooth sailing though, because during the fracas the two lose sight of the cargo they were meant to deliver, which turns out to be an incredibly deadly (and equally fake) mutant snake now on the loose. From there, it's island hijinks at full throttle and it won't stop until the fatcats controlling the Hawaiian drug underworld are either dead or behind bars.
The two mostly run around (on the job, mind you) sporting feathered bangs in butt cheek-exposing short shorts, knee-high boots and sleeveless vests, while wearing tool belts equipped with ninja stars and nunchucks and basically kicking the ass of all manner of faux-bad guys unfortunate enough to get in their way. The whole thing also goes down to the tune of some hilariously, brutally bad original songs and includes more than a serviceable amount of hammy dialog to prop up the less action-intensive moments. The whole affair is really, unapologetically about the boobs though and if you were to take a running tally that included the credit sequence that acts as a sort of bare breast highlight reel of the entire film, you'd easily be looking at an exposed breast quotient that tops the 20 mark.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
For those of us who like our laughs served with unhealthy doses of sleeze and baseless humor (and if you're reading this I'd bet you sure do), this thing is a brazenly good time. I would not call Sidaris the wittiest of filmmakers nor an ace script-writer by even the lowest of trash cinema standards, but he is an unquestionably solid, workmanlike one given the high volume and prolific nature of the "Triple B" series in total (and given the decidedly lowbrow nature of his work). It's also obvious that the bulk of the folks involved in the production were having a deliriously good time making this film and the manifest sincerity of such creative chemistry is something any fan of B-movies should appreciate. (As an aside, the film would make a riotously funny double feature with 'Samurai Cop'.)
There are some undeniably awesome gems of dialog idiocy in this one and you'll recognize this early on when Donna demonstrates her recognition of the cathartic and soul-cleansing qualities of topless hot tub time: "Let's unload and hit the jacuzzi... I do my best thinking there." The movie scored additionally side-splitting laughs from me when one of the male characters, in noting his high-powered prowess with the fairer sex, offered a post-coital sweet nothing to his lady friend in the form of the truly charming and timeless observation that "one man's dream is another man's lunch."
The movie also sports an abundantly absurd inventory of ridiculous moments that, to name a few, includes a blow up doll being shot out the sky with a bazooka, a death-by-harpoon-gun, a man riding a motorbike directly through the wall of a house, an outrageously profane tv interview with a pro football player, a spy in drag, a razorblade frisbee death, an edit of a dummy subbed for a man who was dropped from a building, a blatantly artificial hand puppet snake, a sumo wrestling match, a machine gun-toting baddie named "Shades" who likes to play frisbee on the beach, and a WHOLE LOT more...
If you're the type to stomach the excess, 'Hard Ticket To Hawaii' is a feast of vulgar delights.
So... I've been meaning to do a post like this for a while and have now decided to make good on it. Here is a list, in alphabetical order, of my "50 favorite songs of the '00's".
I should start by saying that I don't think a list like this could ever truly be "accurate" or perfectly representational of my definitive favorites because my feelings about a lot of these songs can change on a near day to day basis. In other words, I could easily come up with another 50-100 songs that could replace any number of songs within this list and still hold true to my supposed "50 favorite"... But, with the mind that I should just churn out this post and sing the praises of some of my favorite music of the last ten years, I've decided that despite inevitably forgetting some equally great tunes, I'm just gonna throw this thing out there for the world as is.
Additionally, I'd like to stress that this list is IN NO WAY meant to be a definitive statement of any kind with regard to the "objectively" best songs of the decade. I think lists of that variety, while often being interesting conversational fodder, are flawed by nature given the inherent subjectivity of such things. With that in mind, I've decided simply to list them in alphabetical order to do nothing other than call attention to what I think are some really great songs.
I've also opted not to double up any of the artists, even if I thought they deserved multiple mentions, in order to diversify the list. For example, though I could realistically pick any number of Burial or Basement Jaxx songs from the last decade that I loved, I instead chose what I thought was the most immediately memorable song they made. Or, for example, though I could never really pick a favorite song off of The Avalanches' 'Since I Left You' LP (which was probably my favorite album of the whole decade), I decided to simply have the title track represent that album on the list because it most blatantly represents the spirit of the recording in full. In the instance of individual producers who did wildly varied work, and who I thought made amazing music and deserved mention in some way or another (like, say, Timbaland, Trentemoller or Ewan Pearson), I picked what I thought was their single production that had the biggest impact on me.
Also, I've decided not to add any content specific to the songs themselves. The fact is, nobody really needs me to tell them why a song like "B.O.B." is so awesome... It just fucking is and if that's not obvious to you then I'm probably not going to have any luck making that clear to you. I had originally started to write little 1 or 2-paragraph entries on each song though and frankly, became a little overwhelmed by the prospect of knocking out all 50. It was simply WAY too much work. But... Since I do have a head start on the writing, I've decided to let the popularity (or lack thereof) of this post decide whether or not I ultimately add the additional, song-by-song content. So... I'm gonna put it out there that if I get a mere 10 people to say in the comment section of this post that they'd be interested in hearing my additional and elaborated thoughts on each of these songs then I will go ahead and begin editing the post anew.
Without further ado...
Aaliyah - "More Than A Woman"
Air - "Playground Love"
Akufen - "Deck The House"
Antony & The Johnsons - "Hope There's Someone"
The Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
Asobi Seksu - "Thursday"
[The Avalanches - "Since I Left You"]
Basement Jaxx - "Romeo"
Bent - "Magic Love"
Blonde Redhead - "In Particular"
Boards Of Canada - "Dayvan Cowboy"
Booka Shade - "Night Falls"
The Bug - "Skeng"
Burial - "Archangel"
Camera Obscura - "Hey Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken"
Caribou - "Melody Day"
Cat Power - "The Greatest"
The Chemical Brothers - "Star Guitar"
Cortney Tidwell - "Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan's Objects In Space Remix)"
Daft Punk - "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"
Death In Vegas - "Girls"
DJ Marky & XRS - "LK"
DNTEL - "(This Is) The Dream Of Evan & Chan"
Dungen - "Panda"
The Flaming Lips - "Fight Test"
Gui Boratto - "Beautiful Life"
Herbert - "It's Only"
Jaylib - "The Red"
Jay-Z - "99 Problems"
Lali Puna - "Faking The Books"
Layo & Bushwacka! - "Deep South"
Luomo - "Tessio"
M83 - "Kim & Jessie"
MJ Cole - "Sincere"
Mymy - "Fast Freeze"
Nathan Fake - "The Sky Was Pink (James Holden Remix)"
