Assimilation Complete

I haven't posted in a while but I'll make up for it with this: it's a video for the psychedelic band Zombie Zombie that uses stop motion to remake John Carpenter's great The Thing (which I just happened to rewatch two days ago) with GI Joe figures.
As a lover of The Thing, stop motion, and action figures, I can say it's pretty rocking.

America 20XX is TODAY!

The date is finally here, everyone! In just a few short hours America 20XX, the play written and directed by Cyriaque Lamar and starring members of Wacky Hijinks will premiere.

Is it good? Well, we got the primetime 7:30 pm slot on opening night of the 2008 New York Fringe Festival, so it damn well better be good.

The whole thing's really exciting. Not only do we get to be a part of this amazing festival and meet all the cool people involved (and hit up the parties...), we also get to perform in an honest to God Off-Broadway theater! Come tomorrow, I can say without fear or repercussion that I have starred in an Off-Broadway play. That's just bad ass.

We finally got to go to the actual venue last Monday and it really is perfect. It's one of the best venues in the entire festival (out of the 18 involved). It's literally right on the edge of Washington Square Park in this real trendy area so we're sure to get a lot of walk-in audience members. And we may get even more with some of the publicity we've got coming up.

Cyriaque did an interview today which will go on the Fringe Podcast (I'll link to it when it's up) and they told him that some of the Media Passes have already been reserved for our show which is absolutely terrifying. I've never before been reviewed by anyone except my parents.

I've gotta keep my mind off that stuff though or I'll freak myself out. So, instead, I'll think about this awesome sketch. Here it is with the picture it was based on:

The drawing was done by Dan Pillis for the show's program. He's the guy who did the great drawing of the publicity photo which I posted a while back. He made sketches of all us and you can see them at the site or, even better, when you get your program at the door.

So yeah, get the fuck out and see America 20XX at some point over the next couple of weeks. You can buy your tickets online for added ease and if you're extra nice, you might even get to come out for drinks with us afterwards!

Anywho, I'll leave you with this tantalizing teaser: if you come to America 20XX, you'll get all the extreme political science fiction you crave, and you'll even get to find out what scene this song is in:

God, why don't today's music videos have as many nipples as that one?

Random Comic Fun!

This is yesterday's Mary Worth. Read it:

Recognise those lyrics? It took me a minute. Here's a hint:

That's right, Mary Worth, the Sunday's snooty sepuagenarian is at a Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova concert. Sure, it's some kind of bizarro Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova who dress like late 50s folk singers instead of the mid 00s folk singers they are, but still.

Weird.

Snakes on the Plate!

Went to the Phillies game today with Rusty and Erica. A fun time was had by all and not just because it ended up being a win for the Phillies over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
We covered ourselves in suntan lotion, drank $7 beers and had long conversations about which player had chosen the best song to be played before his at bat. Soon we were talking about which song we would choose were we somehow talented, lucky, and (in Erica's case) man enough to be a professional baseball player. I decided that I would definitely choose a song that was incredibly inappropriate, either for my personality or for the context.
I ended up choosing the combination of R Kelly's "World's Greatest":


And the theme song for the Andy Griffith show:


Eventually Rusty pointed out that the mere fact that we had spent so much effort thinking about this is proof positive that we will never ever be professional athletes.

The most fun part of the day, however, was the fact that we were sitting behind one of the only groups of Arizona fans in the stadium. It was a cute family complete with three very young children, but that didn't stop the Philadelphia fans from giving them their due punishment (although they didn't get it nearly as bad as some Yankees fan who wandered in).
It probably didn't help that the Diamondbackers (I don't care enough to look up what Arizona fans actually call themselves) had brought along this incredibly annoying noisemaker that they shook after every play. It was some official Diamondback merchandise and was shaped like a giant rattlesnake's rattle and made the sound when shook that said snake makes when startled.
It made me wonder: if lots of Arizona fans have those and one day an actual rattlesnake got loose in the stadium, how many people would die before anyone noticed?

America 20XX Preview on NYTheatre.com

Just what the title says. The website, dedicated to all things, well, involving theater in New York, has posted previews of all the shows from this year's Fringe Festival including our very own America 20XX!
Check it out here and remember, you know the site is prestigious because they spell it "theatre".*

And now, because we have the word "America" in the title, here are some one-day-late Fourth of July multimedia goodies:







* In my first week of working at McCarter, I asked if there was a rule for when they use "theater" and "theatre" since they had literature using both. I was told that the general McCarter rule involved using the "re" whenever dealing with a proper noun like the name of a specific building. So, in theory, I could have a sentence saying, "I went to the Jon Bershad Theatre and performed some theater."
Fascinating? I thought so.

My July Playlist

Hey, it's a new month. Look at that. Stupid quickly advancing time. Now I'm stuck contemplating my mortality. Eh...I guess I'll put up a new playlist instead.



Some Highlights

• There are a bunch of great songs here. The freshness of the list has a lot to do with that great A.V. Club list I linked to a while back of the best songs of the year (so far).
• Track 13 is off Sigur Rós' (great) new album. Although everyone's written about how it's all a departure for the band, here's a nine minute track that sounds like their classic stuff from the slow build to the magical climax.
• I did the fun "local band" thing again and added a track from another Rutgers band. This time the band is the Seal Club who, if you've been paying attention, you'll recognise as the guys who made up most of the house band for Zipperface. It's a great song and you can find it at track 7.
• "Smell yo dick"? Hilarious.

Enjoy it everyone. I've gotta run because I'm doing some more Sorrow Hill filming tonight. Expect a write up on that...eventually.

ps. In case anyone hasn't noticed, you can listen to all of the old Playlists of the Month by clicking the "Playlists" link in the label column to the right of this page.

A Few Quick Notes

• The new Sigur Rós album is absolutely amazing.
• Mansour Pourmand, the director and producer behind the original film, Zipperface, has written Dave, Andy, and I an e-mail giving us his blessing to bring Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical to the next step.
• Did you read that second bullet point?! That's fucking crazy!

Another Random Appearance on the Internet!

I've got a lot to write about (blogs about Sorrow Hill filming and strip clubs are forthcoming) but I'm in New Brunswick right now and I don't think the girlfriend wants to watch me type for half an hour. However, I can put a fun link in here because it's time once again for one of my Random Appearances on the Internet!


The A.V. Club (the nonfictional entertainment section of The Onion) is probably my favorite website. I'm there everyday and I've linked to articles from it here on the blog a few times. So I was excited to see my name on the site.
A few weeks ago, I was incredibly bored and sent a question in to the Ask the A.V. Club feature and was happily surprised to have it answered on Friday's article. It's a really stupid question but one of those things that always bugged me. you can read it here.
I enjoy the fact that, since I wrote in with my school e-mail, my name appears in full instead of the simple "Jon" I signed with.

In other A.V. Club news, all the music reviewers on the site wrote a great article listing their favorite new songs of this year. The best part is, you can listen to all of them. I have to admit, I'm not cool enough to have heard of 75% of these bands but that meant it was realy great to check in on music that flies way under my music radar. Plus, they threw in a shout out to that amazing Frightened Rabbit song I've posted here a few times.
Here's another cool song from the list by British Sea Power:



A few of the songs they posted videos for instead of just the track. I loved seeing that great Kate Nash video again because potty mouthed British girls singing cute pop songs are adorable. Even better though, this video for Flight of the Conchords:



It's funny that they're making videos for the album since their TV show was mostly videos for the same songs.


And finally, another music tidbit. I've never been as huge a Girl Talk fan as a bunch of my friends. It's mostly because I'm a little hot and cold on the whole sampling thing. However, he released his new album with the same "pay whatever you want to download" thing as Radiohead and I think it's a fascinating idea. You can pay (or not) here.
Also, the first track is rocking:

Putting the "Music" in "Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical" (plus a rather exciting announcement)

A month or so ago I went to New York to interview for an internship with the Colbert Report in the fall. It's was an absolutely massive long shot. Like Eugene O'Neill stage directions long. So I decided not to write anything about it here since I didn't want to jinx myself and I also didn't want to spend months telling everyone who had read the post that I eventually didn't get it.
But I got it.

Yay, hooray for me. I'm awesome, I know. But, yeah, this fall I will be spending three days a week trying to bring Stephen Colbert coffee without accidentally making direct eye contact. It's easily the coolest thing that's happened to me in years. However, I'm going to my best not to get too excited about it since the amount of joy and excitement I feel about something is directly related to the amount of ways it will fall apart right in front of my eyes.

So, to keep from thinking about it, I've been thinking about other cool things Like the fact that the music from Zipperface, the musical I co-wrote, is online! That's right, Brent, resident CAP documenter has uploaded a bunch of songs and soundbites from the show and they're absolutely great.
Of course, let me do my paranoid creater thing and point out the deficiencies right off the bat. Unfortunately, these were taken from the worst performance so I can hear all kinds of problems. Most obviously, this was the night that the guitar was knocked over back stage and was then out of tune for Terry's song (one of my favorites in the show, dammit) so that Dave had to stop playing. Also, you can hear people stumble over lyrics and pacing a few times and somehow we lost the recording of the title song.

Oh, I'm gonna shut up. The songs sound great and it's fantastic to finally get to hear them again. Dave, Andy, and I (and I hope Zach, as well) will be giving them and the eventual video (when it's edited) our undying attention as we try to rewrite the script and bring Zipperface to the next stage. Until then, you can enjoy these as they are and you people who missed the show can kind of see what I've been talking about for the past few months (and be really fucking confused by the references to robots and dinosaurs).

So, here are a few samples.


First off, is the opening tune by a couple members of the Hobo Band:

I can't say enough about how much these guys added to the show. They were made up by members of the New Brunswick band, the Seal Club and were led by Zach Wiseley. Zach is an absolute genius. He also arranged the songs and was able to make them sound like actual musical tunes. I would ask him to do ridiculous stuff like, "Hey, Zach, could you arrange a mixture of all the songs in the first act into one tune to play at the beginning of the second act?" and he'd just do it. Absolutely amazing.

Next we have Morese singing one of the best songs in the show:

Again, this is the night with the shitty guitar. You can hear it right at the beginning. It's so depressing because I absolutely love this song. Fortunately, Morese sells the rest of it and the band sounds great otherwise so it still works. Brent included some dialogue at the end with the punchline of the song. It's a visual joke, so you people who missed the show are gonna be lost, but the rest of us can have fun reminiscing.

Unsurprisingly, I also am posting the Cuban Robot Wars medley, which Brent kept in its entirety. It may be seven and a half minutes long and utterly nonsensical to anyone who didn't see the show (and some who did) but it includes my cameo so, whatever. Plus, it's pretty damn rocking:

For you people who are really confused, here's a brief explanation. I'll try my best to make it simple. The play Zipperface is narrated by a hobo. In the beginning he states that the reason he is able to create the show is because he has software implanted in his head from something he calls "the Cuban Robot Wars". The audience usually shrugs this off as just silly dialogue from a crazy character, however, in act two, the play is interrupted by the narrator having a seizure. Another hobo takes over, however, he doesn't actually know the plot of Zipperface so, when the show starts up again, the audience gets treated to an entirely different musical set during the fabled wars and starring all robots. I played the lead robot.
Understand? Eh. I tried.
In the things that go wrong category, this was the night that I started to laugh and then said "robat" instead of "robot" during my first line. Pretty embarassing to fuck up one of lines when you only have about eight. Especially if you wrote it.

And finally, the best song in the show, the Finale Song:

Nothing went wrong here. This song rules and it will always rule. Plus, this was the night Izzy came to see the show and she was nice enough to hoot when I came onstage to deliver my line. This makes it sound to the untrained ears like I'm some kind of super stud. If only.

If you want to listen to the rest of the songs, you can download them here:
Download: Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical - Music and Soundbites
Again, it's missing the title song but there are a few well-chosen soundbites to make up for it. Like this one:


God, I love this show.

And, hey, I'm interning at the Colbert Report!

Holy One-Liners, Batman!

So they call Batman "The World's Greatest Detective" but I don't think he's that great. I mean, I could be a pretty good detective too if all the mysteries of the city were committed by like one of five people.
And it's not like the mysteries are even that hard.
"Hmmm, somebody released all the penguins from the zoo. I wonder..."

Yay for Lupus! (and other internship fun)

I've mentioned my job a few times in recent blogs, so I suppose it's about time that I actually write about what it is. I mean, I guess I could just leave it vague allowing all my readers who haven't spoken to me recently to just imagine what it is I could be doing. Or hell, I could lie and pretend that my position as intern actually involves fighting crime. But...meh. I don't feel like having to come up with new theater-themed supervillains every week. I mean, God, this isn't some offshoot of Getting Super.

Anywho, I am an intern in the marketing department at McCarter Theatre in Princeton. I originally applied to intern in the artistic department but I fucked up my interview. How did I do this? Well, they asked me what I had been working on recently and I attempted to describe the plot of the musical I had co-written. For those of you that don't know, that musical was entitled Zipperface!!?!: the Hobo Musical and is absolutely impossible to describe without sounding like you've just dropped a couple tabs. Here's a paraphrase of the conversation:

Woman: So what's it about?
Me: Well, it's actually based on this really bad horror movie called Zipperface about a serial killer in a leather gimp costume who kills hookers with a machete.
Woman: Uh huh...
Me: But you see, it's a parody of all these musicals based on movies because we decided to make a musical based on a movie no one's seen.
Woman: Right...
Me: So really it's about these hobos that find the script for the musical and decide to perform it using technology that has been implanted in their brains by the Soviets. Which is something they discuss in the beginning of the musical.
Woman: Ok...so did you perform in it?
Me: Yeah. I played a robot.
Woman: ...

This conversation went on for about 10 minutes. I felt like George Lucas trying to tell movie executives that he wanted his sci-fi action film to open with 30 minute of two gay androids wandering a desert.

So, the people I had my interview with clearly thought I was crazy. I could tell as they led me out that they had no intention of ever hiring me. Fortunately, one of the heads of the marketing department (Who does, in fact, read this blog occasionally. Hi, John!) was an old friend of mine and offered me the internship there when his dropped out.

What do I do? Well, most of the time I just stuff envelopes. You see, McCarter gets tons of requests to donate tickets to charity auctions and it is my job to go through these and file and fill them. This would seem boring but I entertain myself by laughing at the people I'm mailing that have funny names. Or the organizations that do. My favorite was this one:


That's right, there is a charity event called the Fun Day for Lupus. It's organized by the New Jersey chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America and you can read about it on their website here.

I'm sorry, but does anyone else think "Fun Day for Lupus" sounds more like a children's book than a charity event for a terrible, terrible disease. Instead of thinking about "thick, red scaly patches on the skin" or "vaginal ulcers" that title makes me think of a happy dog named Lupus who goes to the carnival and, I dunno, learns about sharing. Probably something like this:


So, that's what I do for a large part of my day. Now you know. I do other stuff too, but those things don't lend itself as easily to snarky discussions of possibly fatal diseases.


PS. Hello to anyone who linked over here from the Grindhouse Blog. Once filming gets under way, you can come here to read a discussion from the point of view of one of the dudes in a muddy hospital gown chasing down pretty ladies as opposed to the director who gets to wear actual clothes the whole time.

PPS. Here's the entire new Sigur Ros album, streaming from their website. It's just as good as one would expect. I love this band.

My June Playlist

Hey all, it was a little late coming but I've finally taken the time to set up my June playlist. You can listen to it on the sidebar all month or down below in this post:

"Put in my mixtape, it's right on the dash! It's the one that says 'Chillin with my peeps and my main man, the Monarch'."

I was checking out the music and movies blog The Playlist and they had a link to a pretty cool site called Mixwit which is home to another playlist application like the one I use on this blog. However, the hook here is that you can make your playlist look like an old-school mixtape which kind of rocks hard.
The appear to just be in their beta stage and the program has a few problems (you can't upload songs, the searching interface kind of sucks, etc.) but I had to try it. So here is my mixtape which I named "CRUISING FOR PUSSY and/or BEER!":

My idea was that it would be a the kind of mixtape that a group of totally rocking dudes would play when they were out looking for action. I open it with the perennial classic of "hanging-out-rock" Big Star's In the Street (just try to forget that a certain piece of shit TV show sullied it) and then I have ten more rocking track, I'm pretty sure none of which were recorded post-80s. And to round it out, I have two songs perfect for backseat loving in case anyone in the joy-ride scored.

PS. The site has a place where you can give them feedback and I sent them a message with a few ideas. I told them it would be cool to be able to see all the songs in the mix without flipping through them and also (I'm really proud of this one) how awesome it would be to have the option to put the sound of a tape being inserted into a tape deck at the beginning when someone loads up your mix.
I'm sorry but that would just plain rule.

PPS. My official June Playlist will be coming shortly.

Sigur Rós Steals Public's Thunder by Pre-Emptively Naming New Single "Gobbledigook" (also nudity!)

File this one in the "Everyone who cares already knows but I'm writing about it anyway" category.

Anyone who knows me that well knows that I love Sigur Rós. If the concert poster in my room didn't tip you off (maybe you should come up to my bedroom more often, wink wink), then my three SR t-shirts should have done the trick. So I was thrilled when I got a mailing list e-mail from them today announcing that their new album will be available on June 23rd and that their first single from it and the accompanying video were now on their website.

I had known the album was coming up but I was really excited about the video. Every Sigur Rós video so far (including the documentary) has been absolutely amazing. The clip for Glosoli is one of my favorite videos of all time. Here it is:

Anyway, the new track is fantastic but the video is really intriguing. While the band has been releasing pictures of naked people in trees for a couple weeks now, I was still surprised by the video which features non-stop full frontal nudity as a bunch of people dance around a forest naked as if the cast of a production of Hair did a musical version of Lord of the Flies.

It's pretty crazy and I give them points for upping my boobie and giney count for the day (which was currently at zero so don't worry, Sam). However, I do take umbridge with the one dude who is skinny and has long hair like a chick. It's like watching the end of The Crying Game whenever he turns around.

Anywho, check out the video and song here. I love this band.

Random Comic Fun!

Like many fans of the mediocrity museum that is the newspaper comics page, I was very confused to see a Vampire Weekend reference in today's "Sally Forth".

You see, I had always imagined that SF was drawn by some woman in her forties and I really didn't expect the characters to start mentioning popular indie rock bands.

I got even more confused when I headed over to the A.V. Club and was informed that "Sally Forth" had previously made a reference to ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead.

A bit of investigating led me to the blog of SF writer Francesco Marciulano and a quick perusal of it leads me to believe that he's a much hipper guy than I would have ever believed from actually reading "Sally Forth".

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing this is to post this pretty cool video he made for his other strip Medium Large.

Back Home Again

Well, I'm back at the old homestead for a bit. So, to celebrate, here's a clip from some trashy show profiling a murder that happened less than a mile from my house!



Ah, the fun. My favorite part is how they made my town sound like some Desperate Housewives bullshit. "Hopewell; a town full of hope and, well, lots of money." Jesus Christ. I guess they can't bother with good writers on a network that changed its name from Court TV to TruTV so they could get away with airing nothing but reality shows.
They do realize that the rich areas of Hopewell are only one part, right? For instance, I was in a local bar this evening called Hillbilly Hall. I really don't think the average patrons of said bar are driving home in S Classes.

Anywho, I was going through my blog posts the other day and I noticed that I haven't posted a song to download recently, so here's a little overdue treat.

Song I'm Currently Obsessed With: Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm


And here's another song too. This one is in this month's playlist and Holly's been begging me to get her an mp3 so here we go: Calvin Harris - Colours

I Oughta be in Pictures

I still haven't gotten to my Hijinks post (it's gonna take me forever to go through all the pictures that were saved) but here's something cool in the mean time:

Does anyone remember those photo mosaics that used to be everywhere in the 90s? You know, the big picture made up of a ton of little pictures that they used for movie ads and stuff (The Truman Show poster is a good example). Well, for a while now I've been wondering if anyone would put up a program to download and do it yourself and, at some point (I don't know how long it's been around) someone did.

It's a freeware program called AndreaMosaic and it works pretty darn well. I haven't had much time to mess around with it, but here are a couple I made:

Here's Greg and I in Hijinks made from all the pictures I have from CAP shows. The clothes came out well but there wasn't enough pictures or detail to make the faces. A nice first attempt though.


I then tried to test out the program's abilities and just loaded in every picture I had on my computer and made this. The details are much clearer but the colors are kind of diluted.

When I have more time, I'll try to perfect my photo mosaic-ing talents. Until then, and in honor of the new movie which was flawed but still more entertaining than it had any right to be, here's an awesome cover of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" by The Cardigans. I know, remember them?

My May Playlist

Many apologies for not posting for a while. I got ridiculously busy with Hijinks (write-up forthcoming) and was kept away from my indulgent online writing. Anyway, to get back into the swing of things, I've created my May playlist which you can listen to below or on the right of this page.



Some of you (ie. Holly) have noticed and complained about my lack of a new playlist last month. What happened was that, what with my Europe trip, I wasn't able to buy or download enough new music to fill up a whole list (my refusal to have more than one song by a given artist also hurt me). However, that means this time I had two months to amass this music which means a lot of varying styles and moods. It's a good one.
The first track is a cool band I saw over the summer with TV on the Radio called Celebration. Then we go into Frightened Rabbit, a band that sounds like a Scottish Long Winters. And next we have a great song by my friend's band, Glad Hearts. The Rutgers Review put out this fantastic CD of New Brunswick bands a couple of weeks ago and I added a few tracks from that including one from Dave (as Half Brother at track 8).
It's a cool list. Enjoy this and then maybe I'll get back to writing actualy entries with words instead of videos and music some time soon.

Super Secret Career Opportunities

So I was going to the grocery store to buy three loaves of Wonder Bread today (there's a reason, although I suppose it's a story for another entry) and I decided to stop by McDonalds, an establishment I frequent because I love the taste and I hate my body.

As I'm sitting there, munching on my fries, I hear Don Henley's classic "The Boys of Summer" come on the radio. I'm enjoying it and it's about to come to the first chorus when, all of a sudden, the music cuts out. Apparently, McDonalds does this thing in their restaurants where they break into the music playing with recorded advertisements for new specials and stuff. They do this about once a song and it's incredibly annoying if it's music you like and, besides, it's kind of stupid because, if you're relaxing and listening to the McDonalds radio, chances are you've already bought your meal anyway.

However, they played this ad that has to be one of the most bat-shit crazy things I've ever heard. I swear to God this is what it said (in a ridiculously cheesey voice, of course):

"You'd be surprised how many famous and successful people have started out working at McDonalds. Actors, athletes, politicians, businessmen, they all started their careers here. Is there a coincidence? We'd tell you, but half the fun is disovering it for yourself!"

Oh my God.

Can we just think about what this is implying? They are basically saying that there may be some kind of secret organization (probably something along the lines of The Skulls at Yale) that creates amazing opportunities for McDonalds employees in literally any career path they choose.
Want to star in the new Indiana Jones movie? No problem, Dave the manager will send word to Spielberg. Want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Just ask and we'll get Ronald McDonald himself to personally call Donald Trump on your behalf. Just make sure you mop up the crapper first. Someone puked up a McFish.

That is just so deranged, I absolutely love it!

Anyway, to make a long story short, the ad ended and the song came back on and it turned out not to be Don Henley but just some shitty cover and I was disappointed.
Then I went and bought Wonder Bread.

The end.



P.S. I googled Steven Spielberg to make sure I had his name spelled right up above because I'm an idiot and I noticed that the first entry says "Books by Steven Spielberg" and then just lists all the books he has made movies based on, thus implying that he actually wrote them. I think it would be great if I lived in a world where Steven Spielberg wrote The Color Purple.

My March Playlist

I posted my monthly playlist. It's a tad late, I know, but give me a break. Like always, I will put it in the corner of the page, but here it is for people who, I don't know, are at the edge of their mouse pad and can't scroll to the right.



Some Highlights

• First things first, Track 4 is not by Dylan Bob. As far as I know there is no Dylan Bob. By posting the song under a fake name, you get to go around the record labels and post the whole thing as opposed to just a sample and, since the song is 11 minutes long, a 30 second piece really wouldn't cut it. It's a wonderful song from the 1975 album Desire. I'd never heard it until I bought the CD last week and it's quickly become my favorite track, even surpassing "Hurricane" although that song's convicted felon hero actually deserved the hero treatment that Dylan gave him. Oh well.
• Track 10, the Okkervil River song, is off Black Sheep Boy, they're last album before The Stage Names, the CD that found a nice place in my top 5 of 2007. Black Sheep Boy is less poppy than Stage Names and thus takes a few more listens to get into. In the end, however, I think it's a more rewarding album (although that could just be because I can listen to the last minute of the epic track "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" over and over again).
• Track 14 is off the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James. It's a great score that comes from an absolutely amazing movie. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet which, judging by the size of its release, is more than likely.
• And the M.I.A. song at Track 1? Maybe the most fun song ever.