Sweep!
Sonicnet is denying that they've canned their whole staff. They're not giving up the number, but they're claiming it's "very small." Whatever you say, guys. I can see how "a small number of employees" can be confused with "entire staff."
They're still limping along somehow — I still get my Sonicnet newsletter every day, and then promptly delete it. There was something interesting in it today, though: Moby is launching a big summer festival-type tour this year, featuring Moby, Outkast, New Order, Incubus, Paul Oakenfold, The Roots, Carl Cox and more. Tour dates and ticket prices will be announced soon.
His site is pretty cool, too — even though it rocks the circa-1997 frames style. He just seems like a really cool guy. I'm not a tremendous fan of his music, but as a person I think he's bad ass.
Now back to our regularly scheduled Friday feature.
Scoop Casey's News Roundup: Yesterday's News Today
This isn't gonna be good for anybody.
But does she retain her amateur status?
Sports News
You heard it here first: Pedro Martinez will go 6-21 with a 0.83 ERA this season.
Iverson probably had more in his pocket than this guy made in a year.
Scoop Casey's Bonus Masters Coverage
Go, Driscoll, go!
Please send email to Scoop at scoopcasey@yahoo.com. Damn straight. ßßß
Sports Final
Just added the latest blawg.com feature: Dynamic, real-time, streaming San Francisco Giants stats. Updated once daily.
Hideo Nomo, whom I have always dug (even when he was a hated Dodger), threw the second no-hitter of his career last night. God bless him. The Sox really needed that.
Saw the premiere of That's My Bush last night. I'm pretty sure it was funny, but I'm not positive. I mean, I was laughing and all, but it was kinda high-concept. It made fun of G.W. and the whole sitcom form. That's gotta be funny, right?
Dack has taken a week off of weblogging. Think he's at the Masters or something. In the meantime I'm enjoying kingFresh and not enjoying megnut at all. Looking forward to what Scoop Casey will turn up on his News Roundup tomorrow. Don't miss it! ßßß
I'm no bandwagon jumper (In fact, I'm probably whatever the opposite of a bandwagon jumper is. If the general public likes something, I generally hate it.), so when I say that Memento kicked ass, it ain't the hype talkin'.
I went in skeptical — I'm naturally suspicious of anything that receives that much press. I was ready to poke holes in the timeline or dismiss the thing as a gimmick if the opportunity presented itself, but it never did. From start to finish (or in this case, from finish to start) I was completely captivated.
If you're an astute moviegoer, chances are that five minutes into your average movie, you know how it will all play out. Not so with Memento. The fact that it runs end to beginning precludes you from doing that. That doesn't mean you won't try, as I did. It's a natural reaction when presented with a mystery. It just means that you won't come anywhere near what actually transpired. Or even that, once you've been presented with all the "facts," you can even be sure what happened.
So that's Memento on its po-mo metafictional level. As a regular old movie, it stands up with the best film noir. That Guy Pearce's character, Leonard Shelby (if that is indeed his real name), was an insurance investigator is an obvious nod to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, and Nolan's gritty direction keeps the action dark and humorous while avoiding hokey neo-noir conventions.
Guy Pearce does an amazing job portraying Shelby, a man incapable of making new memories. Rather than simply playing him as a pathetic, robotic figure, Pearce's Shelby is passionate without knowing why, both remote and present at the same time. Lots of reviews have claimed that the star of this movie is Nolan's script, and that does Pearce a grave disservice. Without his understated performance, I'm not sure this movie works.
Memento is not a movie you can truly digest (and certainly not review) in a single viewing. Multiple viewings will be necessary (and enjoyable) to make sure all the elements hang together. But I'm confident that subsequent viewings will not detract from the full five-pentagram rating I'm bestowing on it. 
Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear, and you'll be just fine. ßßß
Hey Iconocast: fuck you.
Sorry. Just needed to get that out of my system.
Helluva Finals game last night. Arizona was looking good, but you just knew Duke was gonna pull it out. Or at least I did. I ended up in 14th place out of 22 in the office pool, and I beat six random monkeys. Don't ask.
Scoop Casey says the ironminds weblog is nothing more than a bunch of links. While that may be true, they're usually pretty damn funny. And this article breaks down one of my major pet peeves: the fake encore. Ironminds is cool.
If just 3 percent of musicians were as cool as Moby, the world would be a much better place. Besides, he's vegan. And that's gotta count for something.
These people are not vegans. In fact, they're cannibals. Cancer-eating cannibals. Yikes. ßßß
Daylight Savings, Opening Day, and beating a cold. Is there anything better? Maybe. But I can't think of anything.
According to this article, I live in the second most racially diverse city (Oakland) in the U.S. (and probably in the world), just a smidgen behind the LBC (Long Beach). How cool is that?? And this article makes official what I'd already thought: European-Americans or, as I prefer to call them, crackers, are now officially a minority in California. Welcome to the new United States.
Watching Johnny Knoxville take it in the nuts repeatedly last night on Jackass was almost more than I could bear. But watching Steve-O pierce has ass cheeks together was just insane. Jackass rules.
Speaking of MTV, it appears that Sonicnet, the online news arm of MTV, has laid off its entire staff. Dude, if having the entire corporate weight of Viacom and MTV behind you can't make you viable, what hope do the rest of us have? Scary.
In other music news, Puff Daddy is now P. Diddy. Brilliant PR move, Puffy. I mean, P. That should make everyone forget that you're a gun-toting no-tipping-ass mother fucker.
DVD Reviews in Brief
SLC Punk
Not every story needs telling. SLC Punk falls squarely into that category. A really lame (nonexistent?) storyline hampered by excessive reliance on narration and anachronistic music, clothes, and dialogue. Had Matthew Lillard not been attached to this thing, it probably never would have made it to Sundance. And I never would have wasted two hours of my life watching it.
There was one priceless scene though. In the last five minutes of the film, they flash back to show how the two principal characters get into punk. The young version of Matthew Lillard is setting up his latest D&D campaign and rocking "The Trees" by Rush, and the other kid brings in a tape of "Kiss Me Deadly" by Generation X. That was so me. But one good two-minute scene is no excuse to make an awful 97-minute movie. One pentagram, and they're lucky to get that.
Meet the Parents
You have to work pretty damn hard to make Bobby Deniro and Ben Stiller not funny, and for the most part, Jay Roach succeeds in doing just that. This movie was "There's Something about Mary" sanitized for the PG-13 crowd. Had some funny moments, but was mostly wack.
Michael Collins
Manufacturers need to label their double-sided DVDs better. It took me 5 or 10 minutes to realize that I was watching the wrong side and thus the end, not the beginning, of the movie when I first put it in. Granted I was sick and groggy, but that's just a bad UI. Liam Neeson is a stud, and Alan Rickman is consistently great in everything. Aidan Quinn, as always, is just Aidan Quinn.
It was interesting to see Julia Roberts in this movie so soon after she was handed the mantle of Best Actress Ever in the Whole Wide World by the press, 'cuz she pretty much blew in this. Going in and out of her lame Irish accent and being really unattractive just wasn't working for me. I liked the scale of the film, and Julia Roberts notwithstanding, a weak four pentagrams.
Go Arizona, go Lute Olson, and go Eugene Edgerson.
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Don't miss last week's brilliant insight.
