A band without vowels, awesome. Their dancing pop sound is pretty swinging too. I heard the first one last night, Heartbreaker. Their video is visually appealing, I mean who doesn't want to be in some random store in Mexico flirting with a latina babe? I do!
Check it out here.
The second video is at first quite understandable, sexy secretary types groping on some milk shakes. The second part is unnerving. Who goes into orgasmic writhing at the dentist's? Maybe when the office has a disco ball and weird pink liquid is pouring down on your body.
Check that shit out here.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Wrong!
Last night I went to a goth club. There were a ton of goth people there, mainly older rather portly goths. I always thought that goths were supposed to be skinny, tending on the smaller side. Maybe there is a difference between east coast goths and west coast goths, the west side tending to be fatter or maybe that's what happens when goths get old. The whole experience scared me a little, but I guess that's what goths are good for.
Depeche Mode's song "Wrong" reminded me of the experience. The video rules and is worth watching.
Depeche Mode's song "Wrong" reminded me of the experience. The video rules and is worth watching.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
No Homo, No fun!
Theodorakis/News
Flight attendant Steven Slater is walked out of the Port Authority police station after pulling the emergency exit and exiting the airplane. The plane had just landed, but he was ready to take off.
A JetBlue flight attendant blew his top, grabbed some beer and bolted out an emergency slide at Kennedy Airport Monday - then headed home to have sex with his boyfriend.
After he was bonked in the head by a bag, Steven Slater stunned passengers by spewing profanity and ranting about quitting as the flight from Pittsburgh pulled up to the gate about noon.
"To the f-----g a--hole who told me to f--k off, it's been a good 28 years," Slater, 38, purred, cops said. "I've had it. That's it," he added, a passenger said.
The mad-as-hell steward grabbed a couple of brewskis and popped one open before activating the emergency exit, witnesses told airport employees.
After tossing his two carry-on bags on the slide, he followed them to the tarmac.
Slater - who actually first started working for airlines 20 years ago, not 28 - then walked to the AirTrain, stripped off his company tie and flung it off as bemused passengers watched.
"I wish we could all quit our jobs like that," said passenger Phil Catelinet, 36, of Brooklyn, who was on the flight and the AirTrain.
"He seemed kind of happy about it. He was like, 'I just quit my job.' "
Port Authority police said it took jetBlue 25 minutes to report the incident, allowing Slater time to leave the scene.
Cops found him in bed with his boyfriend when they arrived to arrest him at a beachfront home in the Rockaways with a porch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, sources said.
He boasted to skeptical cops that he really did escape by chute with his carry-on luggage.
"Oh, yes, I did! I threw them down first and I went down after," he told cops, sources said.
He was grinning as police walked him in handcuffs to a squad car. "He left with a big smile on his face," said neighbor Curt Karkowski.
Slater was wearing a sheepish smile when Port Authority detectives walked him to a waiting van a few hours later. He was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief.
JetBlue would not say how long Slater had worked for the airline, but he wrote on his MySpace page that he was "enjoying being back in the skies" after a five-year break.
"I love to max it out with trips around the world, sometimes on a moment's notice!" he gushed.
Neighbors described Slater as a nice guy, but said he was under some stress. "Steven's mother is dying," said Judy Rochelle, whose son Kenny lives with Slater. "She has lung cancer. She's had two chemos and the prognosis is not good. They were on their way out to California this weekend to settle her affairs."
Rochelle added that Slater "watched his father die of Lou Gehrig's disease not long ago. Steven's under a lot of pressure."
Slater's MySpace page, packed with photos of him posing in his jetBlue uniform, says he beat "alcoholism and substance abuse."
He apparently reached his breaking point on Flight 1052 when a passenger tried to get a bag from the overhead compartment and it clocked Slater on the head, cops said. Words were exchanged, and the passenger cursed at Slater, they said.
After the plane arrived at the gate, he took over the intercom and began spewing abuse.
"We just looked at each other and said, 'What the heck was that about?' " said Catelinet. "I thought, 'Let me get off the plane before they stop us or something.' "
He said he was stunned when he ran into Slater on the AirTrain, bragging about his "take your plane and shove it" stunt.
"It's pretty much the craziest thing I've ever seen on a plane," Catelinet said.
The brother of Slater's partner said he was "dumbfounded" by the wacky incident.
"He's an everyday ordinary guy, a nice guy," said John Rochelle, 39.
Neighbor Janet Bavasso, an ex-flight attendant, said she couldn't imagine Slater going off.
"I just can't picture him running down the tarmac," she said.
A jetBlue co-worker who was on the flight called Slater a working-class hero.
"It's something we all fantasize about," she said. "But we have kids and a mortgage or are just too chicken - or sane - to go through with [it]."
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Fed-Up Flight Attendant Makes Sliding Exit
Steven Slater o
The home of Steven Slater, a JetBlue attendant, in Belle Harbor, Queens. He was arrested there after using a plane’s chute.
On Monday, on the tarmac at Kennedy International Airport, a JetBlue attendant named Steven Slater decided he had had enough, the authorities said.
After a dispute with a passenger who stood to fetch luggage too soon on a full flight just in from Pittsburgh, Mr. Slater, 38 and a career flight attendant, got on the public-address intercom and let loose a string of invective.
Then, the authorities said, he pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also from his airline career.
On his way out the door, he paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart. Then he ran to the employee parking lot and drove off, the authorities said.
He was arrested at his home in Belle Harbor, Queens, a few miles from the airport, and charged with felony counts of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.
“When they hit that emergency chute, it drops down quickly within seconds,” a law enforcement official said. “If someone was on the ground and it came down without warning, someone could be injured or killed.”
In a statement, JetBlue said it was working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to investigate the episode. “At no time was the security or safety of our customers or crew members at risk,” the company said.
According to his online profiles, Mr. Slater has been the leader of JetBlue’s uniform redesign committee and a member of the airline’s in-flight values committee. Neighbors in California, where Mr. Slater grew up, said he had recently been caring for his dying mother, a retired flight attendant, and had done the same for his father, a pilot.
The contretemps on Monday unfolded as JetBlue Flight 1052, a regional Embraer 190 jet, landed at Kennedy around noon — on time — with 100 passengers aboard and pulled up to the gate, said another law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.
The official offered the following account:
One passenger stood up to retrieve belongings from the overhead compartment before the crew had given permission. Mr. Slater instructed the person to remain seated. The passenger defied him. Mr. Slater reached the passenger just as the person was pulling down the luggage, which struck Mr. Slater in the head.
Mr. Slater asked for an apology. The passenger instead cursed at him. Mr. Slater got on the plane’s public-address system and cursed out the passenger for all to hear. Then, after declaring that 20 years in the airline industry was enough, he blurted out, “It’s been great!” He activated the inflatable evacuation slide at a service exit and left the world of flight attending behind.
In short order, his brick two-story house on Beach 128th Street in the Rockaways, just off the ocean, was swarmed by detectives and uniformed officers from New York City and the Port Authority. “It was like there was a hostage in there,” said Curt Krakowski, who was working on the deck of a house across the street.
Mr. Slater, Mr. Krakowski said, “had a smile on his face when the cops brought him out, like, ‘Yeah, big deal.’ ” Mr. Slater was taken to a Port Authority police building at the airport and was expected to be held overnight.
One person familiar with the investigation said JetBlue took more than 20 minutes to notify the Port Authority police, allowing Mr. Slater time to get home. A spokesman for the airline declined to comment when asked about the delay, and a Port Authority spokesman said, “In matters of criminality, the Port Authority Police Department should be notified immediately.”
The episode is the latest round in what is seen as an increasingly hostile relationship between airlines and passengers.
A few weeks ago, an Air France flight attendant was arrested for stealing the wallets of first-class passengers. Last year, a Canadian singer parodied United Airlines on YouTube in a series of songs about how the airline broke his guitar.
A new study by the International Air Transport Association found an increase in instances of disgruntled passengers and violence on planes, with the chief cause being passengers who refuse to obey safety orders. By the same token, frequent-flier blogs echo with tales of “flight attendant rage.”
While JetBlue’s flight attendants are not unionized, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, Corey Caldwell, said anxieties were common on planes. “Anyone who has traveled since Sept. 11 understands that being in the cabin is stressful these days,” Ms. Caldwell said.
The portrait of Mr. Slater that emerges from interviews with neighbors and friends and from profiles on MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn shows a man with mixed feelings about his job.
Photographs show him in the mountains of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico and sitting behind the wheel of a convertible. “Steven Slater has visited 22 percent of the countries in the world!” the MySpace page announces.
Yes, and Pittsburgh, too. “Chances are I am flying 35,000 feet somewhere over the rainbow on my way to some semifabulous JetBlue Airways destination!” the MySpace page says. “Truly, some are better than others. But I am enjoying being back in the skies and seeing them all.”
A former roommate, John Rochelle, said Mr. Slater was seldom home. When Mr. Slater was not working, Mr. Rochelle said, he was usually in Thousand Oaks, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, caring for his sick mother.
A neighbor there, Ron Franz, said Mr. Slater also cared for his father as he was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Franz, 72, was hard-pressed to explain Mr. Slater’s actions on Monday. “It could be the pressure of his mother’s illness, because that’s not the type of behavior or conduct that Steve exhibits,” he said. “He’s a very conscientious, responsible individual.”
But a former flight attendant, Janet Bavasso, who lives next door to Mr. Slater in Queens, found nothing mysterious at all.
“Enough is enough — good for him,” Ms. Bavasso said. “If he would have called me, I would have picked him up.”
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Imperial Bedrooms
A week or so ago I went to Barnes and Noble. This is rather a banal store but that day I was excited because Bret Easton Ellis' new novel "Imperial Bedrooms," was out. I picked up a copy right away. I brought it to the cashier and told her I was excited about reading it.
"Cool," she replied. "Do you have a Barnes & Noble card?"
"No," I said.
"Would you like one? It save you 10% on your next purchase of $30 or more."
"Nah."
"Do you need your parking validated?"
"Nope. You're pretty good at the list of things you have to say to customers."
"Thanks," she replied in a dead pan voice. "I'm also good at dealing with the constant rejection."
The minimalistic novel is easy to read with its terse style. The bareness of the writing allows its salient yet unsaid emotions pour forth. The exuding feelings mainly deal with the lead character, Clay, a successful screenwriter's rampant narcissism. Ellis points to Clay's neuroticism with his opening quote of Raymond Chandler. "There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."
Clay returns to L.A. just as Ellis returns to the same characters as he did previously in "Less than Zero." "Imperial Bedrooms" is a sequel to Ellis' first novel of glamorous vapidity of young rich kids in the 80s. The kids do coke, do each other, and listen to the Pyschedelic Furs. Its awesome. "Imperial Bedrooms" is set in modern times and in a the oh so modern world of Hollywood (not the town but the spectacular ambiance).
The novel is dark and empty. This is depicted early on when Ellis describes the view from the balcony of the main characters condo.
"The view is impressive without becoming a study in isolation; it's more intimate than the one a friend had who lived on Appian Way, which was so far above the city it seemed as if you were looking at a vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide. (p12,13)"
The majority of the characters in Ellis' first novel abound and the feelings are the same. Clay moves around without a moral compass, and has a variety of ambiguous relationships. His primary relationship is with a young actress whom he has the hots for, but her agenda is unclear. She stays with him for a week but its unclear completely why. Clay has promised that he can get her a part in his upcoming film, in which he is the screenwriter, but the producers nix her due to her poor acting ability. He strings her along as he becomes not only fixated on her but also emotionally dependent.
Clay and the girl fall out eventually due to a variety of soap opera incidents, for example; she's revealed to be a former prostitute from a highly selective service and has slept with many of his vapid friends. His vapid friends have also fallen madly in love with her, coincidentally enough.
The novel also demonstrates Ellis growth as a writer. While retaining the minimalistic style of his first novel he also describes a vivid and surreal scene of violent debauchery reminiscent of the infamous "American Pyscho," made famous not for the movie adaptation, nor for the gratuitous violence but for the lengthy rants on Genesis and Phil Collins.
What is also interesting about this novel is the use of technology. The main characters repeatedly use email and text messaging as valid ways of communicating with each other. Most contemporary novelists seem hesitant to talk about the way in which modern tech has changed the way in which we talk to each other.
The end of the novel, this isn't a spoiler by the way, is much the same as the beginning. Nothing has happened, the compass still spins directionlessly mad, the vapid despair of life in modern society is retained and the main character still clings to the safety of narcissism. All too true.
Check out Details interview with Ellis here. I enjoyed the interview
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