Two Awesome Quotes

"Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star act. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs."
- Henry Rollins

"If you look at the deep sky for long, without averting your gaze, your thoughts and your spirit somehow blend in a consciousness of solitude. The stars that have been looking down for thousands of years, the inscrutable sky itself and the darkness, so indifferent to man's short life. Then you are reminded of the solitude that awaits all of us in the grave. [9 year-old] Yegorushka thought of Grandmother sleeping now in the graveyard beneath the cherry trees. He remembered her lying in her coffin with bronze coins over her eyes; he remembered how they had then closed the lid and lowered her into the grave; he remembered the dull thud of clods of earth on the lid... He visualized Grandmother in her dark, narrow coffin, helpless and forsaken by all. He imagined her suddenly awakening, unable to understand where she was, knocking on the lid, calling for help and in the end growing faint with terror and dying a second death."
- Anton Chekhov

This Happened

Fictional Characters I'd Hang Out With

MINION - A creation from the mind of ManCalledSun

Minion’s purpose is to destroy the weak. This is why I created it. To begin, Minion has six quadrapedal legstocks, each with variable suction hoofs. Achieving fearsome speeds with these, and myself on a Segway, we charge side by side through hordes of sissynecks, nancys, and emo fanboys. Minion can either use the raw power of his hydropiston arms to knock flailing weaklings into orbit or he can simply flex his bronze-plated alloy pectorals (as seen in the picture) and ram boobiehead pancakes into brick walls or spikes or brick walls full of spikes. I have lasers: PEW PEW PEW. Minion’s beltpack is armed with unlimited grenades, dirtybombs and anti-matter pin heads. When we need a quick recharge, my man purse is stocked with burritos and High on Fire CDs and the first season of Prison Break on DVD. Minion has razor blades coming out of his skull because a simple headbutt just isn’t enough; that, and I think it’s cool to have razorblades growing out of your skull. My white Styrofoam Segway helmet has, like, uber-reflective stickers that confuse and disorient the enemy. This is when I come up and swat them right on the adam's apple with a wiffleball bat: THWAP! NO MORE LAME SOCIAL COMMENTARY FROM YOU!

We will cleanse existence of guyliner and obnoxiously large neon sunglasses. It is our duty.

Yes, Max, those are geeks.

Flight of the Navigator is an awesome movie.

It’s about a 12 year old boy, David, who is borrowed from his home time of 1978 for study by a being of superior intelligence. Part of the Trimaxium Droneship’s (Max) study is to fill David’s brain with star charts and observe what happens when the human mind is exerted to maximum processing power.

Afterwards, David is returned to the exact spot that he was abducted, but because of the complications of the special theory of relativity, he comes to learn that it is now eight years later – everything has changed, except David. Meanwhile, on its way out of earth’s atmosphere, Max is accidentally snagged in high voltage power lines, thus erasing its memory of the very same star charts that David currently and unknowingly has stored in his brain. Now they need each other: Max needs David’s star charts to return to its home planet, David needs Max to elude NASA scientists and government officials and return safely to his family.

Awesome. Good stuff, man. Good Stuff.

I enjoy this movie. Always have. In fact, I would be comfortable declaring that “I grew up with” Flight of the Navigator. I remember boogie boarding on Pacific Beach in ‘94, imagining that I was skimming along at incredible speeds like the navigator’s spaceship, all the while sounding out Silvestri’s theme music. I remember thinking I was all cute using the “Compliance!” response when Mrs. Eastman asked for my math homework.

This movie could have very well planted the seeds for my layman interest in the workings of the universe, as well as cultivated a deep, fantastic yearning to zip and zoom in a small, single passenger space pod while blasting and singing along to awesome music:

How envious I am to be in that very seat.

As time progresses it is easy identify how watching Flight of the Navigator as a youth has shaped who I’m becoming as an adult.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff.

Originally, this blog post was going to wrap itself up right about here. The initial intent was to simply rave about an awesome movie that continues to tug on my heart strings. However, during the course of composition I stumbled across a pertinent bit of information…

I went to Google to search for a relevant graphic to head this post and began to enter: “Flight of the Navi…” Google, doing what Google does, gave a drop down menu offering search suggestions based on what I had typed in thus far. Naturally, the first completed suggestion was what I had initially sought: “Flight of the Navigator.” The second suggestion read: “Flight of the Navigator remake.”

Flight of the Navigator REMAKE?!


A flurry of emotions came to me: Firstly, there was the obligatory knee-jerk reaction of “Hollywood is running out of ideas, so Disney is just gonna go and befoul a movie that I grew up with? Just leave it alone!”; Followed quickly by, “Well, given the cinematic advances of recent years perhaps a face-lift is actually a pretty cool idea!”; Followed quickly by disgust at myself, “How dare I think so shallowly about the ‘wow’ factor of CGI! The story runs deeper than that.” And so on.

Then I decided to actually go with the Google search and read and learn what is said about the remake. I know, right? Read and become informed before jumping to conclusions…

Now armed with what little information about the remake that is given, I’m going to expand on this Rave post about Flight of the Navigator, and discuss what would make its remake a legitimate effort. My goal is to be as level-headed as possible.

Part 2: A level-headed, sort-of-biased-but-not-biased examination of what would make Flight of the Navigator's remake legit COMING SOON

Everything you do is a balloon!

By watching this video you are thereby confirming that everything you know and treasure in life is but chump change compared to the majesty and horror contained herein. Don't say I've never done anything for you.

Slightly Embellished for Dramatic Effect - April 2010 BRR Mixtape Brigade

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5KXNBGZ9

This month's offering is a revisit to a Mix that I made a couple of years ago. I spruced it up with a couple of songs/bands I'm currently diggin on. The end result is a moody sequence with a romping sort of humility, a blasphemous sort of righteousness, a groggy sort of intensity - etc, etc. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

Dig it.