Here come the Repo Men... again...

I just stumbled across this site.

It's a really well-designed site that's a viral piece for an upcoming film called Repo Men, which stars Jude Law and Forest Whitaker.

The real site for the film is here.

The concept is a good one. In the (near) future, organ transplant science will have reached a point where the science is good, and while people will need them in order to avert terminal disease or fatal injuries, they won't be able to afford them.

This is where the big corporations come in.

With a financing plan, you'll be able to set up a payment plan in order to finance your new organs and new life.

But what happens if you fall behind on your payments?

They send the Repo Men out to collect the company's property.



It sounds like a novel concept, no?

No.

They totally lifted the plot from an excellent independent film from 2008 called Repo: The Genetic Opera, which is a dark, surreal rock opera that features (among others) Paris Hilton (who is actually good), Ogre (from Skinny Puppy), Sarah Brightman and a surprise cameo by one of the most badass women in rock and roll.



I know it's nothing new, but it rankles my limpets badly enough when Hollywood simply remakes a classic film out of greed and a lack of willingness to take a chance with a fresh idea, and it's even worse when they simply choose to rip off the indies who did it first and (probably) better.

See it if you must, but see the opera first.

Angry Monkey Update

Like last year, it appears that Team Angry Monkey will not be signing up for Iceman this year. Actually ever again.

It was fun for the several years we did it, but everyone seems to be of the "been there, done that" mentality.

Instead, though, it seems that one of our team members, one of the more hardcore (hint: not me), has gone and signed up for this. It happens to be Michigan's most hardcore race.

Last summer, I rode the trail the course is on. It kicked my ass. And I rode it once. For this race, he'll be riding it three times. For a total of 100 miles.

We're going up to cheer him on. The afterparty will be sweet, but I don't know if he'll come to it.

Introducing Jezebel

On a frigid winter day, Jezebel, as she has come to be known, made her maiden voyage around the block. It was success, but then she had to go back inside to wait for spring.

Almost ready to roll...

Remember this?



Restoration is coming along fine. I'm only a few hours out from having it ready to roll out. Here's a bit of what I've been doing.

This is what the fender looked like when we got it:



This is what it looks like now:



After that is all set up for TFN, it will be time to start on my new baby:



This is a late '50s/early '60s Hawthorne Hercules, manufactured in England. I'm still trying to learn more about it, but the documentation isn't as easy to find as it was for the Schwinn. It's going to be my new ride, though.

As soon as it gets warm.

15 Feet Of Pure White Snow

I think I’m going to start a bit of a series on some of the people I consider to be musical geniuses.

First up, Nick Cave.



I wasn’t sure which song to post, I was first going to use “Into My Arms,” but I have posted it before. And I was going to post something more in your face, like a song from “Murder Ballads,” but I think that may have put some people off on hearing how great this guy. And I was going to post a video of him with someone else I’ve professed admiration for – the guy I named my dog after - that was a duet of Nick Cave and Shane MacGowan doing “What a Wonderful World.”

Instead, I decided I was trying too hard and assuming you saw that old video - which is a beautiful love song and also an amazing piece of film - I'd posted before, and I realized that the original host had yanked it (we all know how I feel about that), so it's back again.

Nick Cave started with the Birthday party about 500 years ago, then went on to front Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (and later Grinderman). He is smooth, talented and a snappy dresser.

He’s also a great writer. The first book I read by him was And The Ass Saw The Angel. It’s an amazing piece of Southern Gothic prose that could only have been written by someone who is a biblical scholar (Cave is, albeit self-taught) and someone who is very dark and just a bit twisted.

Right now, I’m reading his latest, The Death of Bunny Munro. Bunny Munro is a dark, yet strangely touching and intimate story of a man and his relationship with his son. And the more I read it, the more I think that, with the title character, Nick is writing about himself – at least some aspect of himself.

But herein lies my problem – Bunny is not a likable character. At all. It was like when I first read The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a miserable bastard of a human being. Bunny is like this. He has a lot of issues and is undergoing a bunch of self-deception, so I hope that I’m off base in wondering if it’s a bit of a self-depiction. Really, my main idea for this is that Bunny and Nick Cave dress and seem to look the same, but I may be projecting.

Anyway.

I like Nick Cave.

The end.

Except for, oh yeah, he's an actor, too. And has played opposite Brad Pitt.




Anyway, that's all I got for now.

A conspiracy of intergalactic proportions...

When I was in elementary school, my teacher regaled me with ideas of the year 2000. These included the existence of everyday items like flying cars and jetpacks. Also, we were going to be living on the moon.

Now, 10 years into the millennium, not only am I still waiting for my jetpack, but we’re also not on the moon. We’ve yet to put a man on Mars, and really, the advances made in the space program haven’t really been that impressive since we took “One small step” by faking the moon landing in a Hollywood studio.

What happened? Why did our space program stumble so? I suppose one could claim that the Challenger disaster had something to do with it, or simply revised priorities. But doesn’t it strike you as odd that nobody, out of any of the nations with any sort of a space program, accomplished anything?

Doesn’t it sound like a bit of conspiracy?

Who, though, would be behind something like that? Who has that much power, and that much disdain for the entire world, that they could prevent the worldwide space program from expanding much at all?

What about one of the most evil – and powerful – families in the world?

What about the De Beers family?

We’re talking about a family that has managed to destroy the lives of entire peoples, and had tribes beaten, tortured and relocated, just so they could control the world’s diamond supply. By creating an artificial shortage of a sparkly rock that’s rather common, they stay rich.

But why, you ask, would they set sights on the space program? What benefit would they get from maintaining a stranglehold on that particular industry? Well, aside from the fact that they are just dicks, you’d be right in thinking they’d need a financial motivation as well, as greed has been the motivator for this family’s rise to running one of the most evil empires the world has seen, has set them up in a situation where they allow genocide to happen and has permitted the existence of a economic empire more powerful than any government that may try to hold them accountable.

What if that motivation was to prevent the discovery of diamonds in space? What if their motivation was based on knowledge that there existed, relatively close in astronomical terms, planets with entire oceans of liquid diamonds, with icebergs made of solid diamond floating on them? What if they realized that one voyage to one of these planets could effectively decimate their worth.

It might sound far fetched. But is it really? These guys don't think so.

Yummy...

A delectable item I discovered in my grocer's freezer...