Page 51 of this week’s City Pages has an ad for the opening of a new Musical Instrument Store at the Richfield Best Buy. The grand opening party on Sat, Nov 10 will feature in-store performances by Shannon Curfman and local staple GB Leighton.

I’m not surprised. Check out the latest Best Buy advertisement; the FIRST FOUR PAGES are exclusively Guitar Hero gear.

I’ve said it before, the recent surge of popularity in shows like American Idol, Rock Star, and the smashing success of the Guitar Hero video game are jacking the interest in releasing your inner musician and goosing musical instrument sales. Guitar Center added on a Third store here in the Minneapolis metro area, and now Best Buy is poised to dip a toe in the water.

Best Buy has always dabbled in music gear, carrying the Donkey Konga Bongos and maybe a Casio keyboard or two, and maybe a smattering of Yamaha gear on their website. But it seems they have slipped into bed with a couple major distributors, Gibson, M-Audio, Suzuki, and Fender (although I’ve never heard of a Fender STARcaster before.

Minnesota isn’t the only target market, a Best Buy in California did the same thing. According to that blog post, it sounds like Best Buy is really giving it more than just lip service. They  even added on an isolated acoustic room in the store. Guitar Center certainly has cause to be nervous; the distribution power of Best Buy far surpasses that of Guitar Center, both in Brick and Mortar stores and websites.

My suspicion is that if Best Buy’s Musical Instrument Flagship takes off, they will add it as a feature to their larger stores in the same way they added the Magnolia Home Theatre section to certain stores.

I don’t think Guitar Center needs to worry unless Best Buy spins off their musical instrument sales into separate stores and starts carrying real gear. Real musicians won’t be fooled by the name ‘Starcaster’ and they will go to a real music store for their gear. Furthermore, Guitar Center employees know music (mostly) and while this might be a passing fad for Best Buy, making music is Guitar Center’s lifeblood.

The worst thing that could happen is that a bunch of talentless and spoiled brats who look up to Nickelback and Bruce Springsteen get their hands on a Fender Starcaster and post a bunch of shit-rock to their myspace page. But the internet has plenty of room for more music, and I’d rather see kids writing bad Emo music than selling Crack, and even playing a Starcaster poorly is better than playing Guitar Hero well.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Alright, this made me laugh. A lot.

Girls’s Costume Warehouse

OK, maybe it’s just a chromosome thing. Anyway, thanks to Sarah for the linkage.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

According to imdb, Sam Raimi decided to step back from directing 30 Days of Night and only act in a producing role. After seeing Spider-Man 3 I have to say…good call. I mean, I went to Spider-Man 3 to see comic book action, and got a shitload of Blubbering-Emo-Boy.

Finally, a vampire movie where vampires aren’t a bunch of pussies sitting around drinking wine with their pinkies out.

Finally, a vampire movie with (gasp!) scary vampires.

Finally, a movie where people make REALISTIC choices despite the abstract situation. They did what you or I would do under the same bizarre circumstances. Too many movies go so far over the top that it’s impossible to suspend your disbelief (or your gag reflex). 30 Days of Night ‘kept it real’ with a simple and tight story, and that kept the horror real. Sadly, this technique is the exception for American horror films.

30 Days of Night is Really graphic, I mean chopping someones head off with a dull axe…well, it’s pretty gritty, grim, dark and bloody; in other words a damn good horror film.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Turns out Zombies have a keen fashion sense. Someone in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area started up a Zombie Fashion Show called Dead Sexy. And I missed it.

How come I only hear about these things after they happen?

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Hardcore Dave - Photo by David de Young

If you hit the Minneapolis and St. Paul clubs back in the 90′s then you probably met Hardcore Dave. Hardcore Dave was at every single live music performance. Every one. I know you think this is impossible, but it isn’t, because Hardcore Dave is a God. His official title is “Hardcore Dave, Rock God of the Twin Cities”.

Last time I saw Hardcore Dave was when SchaffDog and I were down at the Cabooze, where we had paid five bucks and sat through a god-awful band called The Billys who actually made a whole song out of the Juicy Fruit Gum jingle. A whole fucking song. With a guitar solo and everything. It sucked, but you guessed that already.

But we suffered through it to see a band we really liked, The Nixon Pupils. It was worth the wait. They previewed a song they had just made up, a kind of beat poetry piece called “The Spirit of a Saturday Night”. And for an encore, they invited Hardcore Dave on stage, and they played “Wild Thing” together, and the crowd went absolutely psychotic.

Hardcore Dave was at the top of his game back then. Everyone knew who he was, and those who didn’t, pretended that they did. I was pretty thick into the Minneapolis music scene in the 90′s and ran into Dave all the time, but I didn’t know any more about him than his name. I thought that maybe he was an industry exec or a talent scout, but he sure didn’t act like one. Turns out that he was simply a professional fan of live music like me.

On Sept 25, 1996, exactly Eleven Years Ago, this article came out. It gives you a glossy overview of Hardcore Dave, and what makes him tick.

It was exactly Eleven Years later that I ran into Hardcore Dave. Today. Sept 25, 2007. Eleven Years to the Day.

More correctly, I should say that Hardcore Dave ran into me. At, of all places, the gas station. I was wandering around in an uncaffinated haze, my mind functioning just enough to push my body towards the nearest source of caffeine. I was just thinking that was probably how it felt to be a zombie in Resident Evil: Extinction, (except replace ‘Caffeine’ with ‘Brains’) when I noticed someone talking near me. Talking towards me.

Talking *to* me.

“…there he is!” someone said.

My eyes came into focus on a well-dressed man with no hair, but a large, familiar grin.

“Dave?” I asked, my hand half-extended in case I was wrong, “Hardcore Dave?”

It was. He didn’t look much different from how I remembered him.

Anyway, we got to talking and he said he recognized me right away. From eleven years ago, and of all the people he ever met (and never spoke to) *he* recognized *me*.

Strange days, indeed.

I told him the story of Jagged Spiral And The Very-Very-Nearly-Finished Recording “Days From Evil“. He made me promise to get him a copy of the album, and he asked if I could sign it.

Hardcore Dave asked me for my autograph.

What an awesome day…

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

You know what you’re getting into when you go to Resident Evil: Extinction, and seeing the other Resident Evil movies beforehand is nice, but not necessary.

Extinction ditches the video game feel that the other two R.E. movies had, and I’d say that is a good thing. All three R.E. movies are gritty and bloody, but this one takes the prize for being the grittiest, bloodiest, and most ridiculously violent of the three. As a matter of fact, although they pulled out some of the old sets (and footage) from the first film. Extinction branches away from the constricted underground research-lab feel of the first movie, and into the barren wastelands of post-apocalyptica. At this rate, the next R.E. movie will be in outer space.

After a disjointed and slow start (including a dyslexic encounter between Alice and some zombie-dogs), the movie works out to be a remake of Road Warrior done by George Romero. I mean that in a good way, although I didn’t care for any of Romero’s “[Fill in the Blank] of the Dead” movies. The concept of ‘domesticating’ the zombies comes up, and people will make all the comparisons to Zombie Consumerist Culture (and all the reactions against it), but I don’t think there is much reflective/educational/societal commentary value to Resident Evil: Extinction.

Soundtrack was good (Including the fantastic remake of White Rabbit from Collide’s “Chasing the Ghost” which was my first online music purchase, and is only seven years overdue for recognition)

They need to hire back Marilyn Manson to do score and sound design. The ambient sound in the first R.E. movie was some of the best ever done, and really lacking in the second and third R.E. films.

And I have mixed feelings about Alice finally finding some clothing, after running around the first two films half-naked. But don’t worry, you will get to see plenty of Milla. Let’s just say an exponentially exposed amount of Milla, and leave it at that.

Since your mind was already on the topic of having sex with Milla Jovovich, I have heard rumors that she is pregnant, and I just wanted to officially state for the record that no matter what you might have heard, I had nothing to do with it.

Executive Summary Review

R.E.3 is better than the second, but not quite as good as the first. Definitely worth seeing in the theatre.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Looks like this Friday is the night to go if you were thinking of heading over to Crypticon, the Circus of Terror. Friday they will be showing some independent horror films. I don’t think I can swing the $25 to get in, nor the $20 if you buy tix online. I don’t know anyone who went last year, so I can’t tell you if it’s worth it or not.

If you went to Crypticon, or know someone who did, drop a comment here.

KTHXBYE,
-CZ

A Review of the Video Game Oblivion

You might recall that I was playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as an Axe-Wielding Barbarian, which was quite a shift in character for me.

Well, in the past year (60 game days) I have tracked down the king’s heir; Tiber Septim. I located the Amulet of Kings, relit the Dragon Fires, and enabled Tiber to vanquish the evil Lord Dagon. I have cast evil back into the shadows, and was treated to a lovely extended battle animation sequence, then proclaimed a Champion of Tamariel.

In the process, I joined a dozen secret societies, shut 14 oblivion gates, and killed off 1062 beings.

Blow me, Sims.

Oblivion has now been added to my list of completed video games.

Oblivion was simply a fantastic game from start to finish. A complete world to be immersed in and do whatever you please, regardless of the world-ending plot hanging over you. In fact, after defeating the Evil To End All Evils, the game does not stop. You could continue on and help out each and every person with a problem, or kill every living soul who crosses your path. The expansion packs: “The Shivering Isles” and the “Knights of the Nine” (which will be realeased in the Game Of The Year edition – Yes, Oblivion was Game Of The Year last year) means I can continue on my rampage of Killing For The Greater Good with new locations and quests, if I so choose.

Oblivion has smashing graphics, and a fantastic plot. There were so many quests, that I finally had to be picky with whom I aided, and in the end, I gave up all other quests to focus on the big one, or I might never finish:

“Sorry about those rats in your basement ma’am, but I have to go close some inter-dimensional rift in the time-space continuum…”

For the record, Oblivion has replaced F.E.A.R. as my Favorite Video Game. Here is the current list of my favorites:

Quake I (1996)
Half-Life I (1998)
F.E.A.R. (2005)
Oblivion (2006)

The game Deus Ex was a contender sometime between Half-Life and F.E.A.R., it was pretty good, but I lost interest in the game very near the end and never finished it.

It took a long time for anyone to beat the original Half-Life, and F.E.A.R. only did it by taking Half-Life and adding in some great level design, audio environment, spooky paranormal events, and the kick-ass effect of “Bullet Time” where you could slow time down momentarily and take out a roomful of bad guys by yourself.

Oblivion topped them all by creating huge, GPU-melting environments, and a open world, where you weren’t locked into a linear plot. You choose where you want to go, and what you want to do. If you want to take up a skill you don’t have yet, just start doing it. The more you do, the better you get.

Now, I’m on the lookout for another game to sate my trigger finger, probably something SciFi, now that I’ve quested as an axe-wielding barbarian for about a year now. Tabula Rasa looks promising, as does Crysis. But, what I really want to do is fly an X-Wing with a squadron of online gamers against the Death Star…

KTHXBYE,
-CZ

Alright, so I don’t like spiders. There is a simple rule in my house:

if (creature.legs > 4) then KillItToDeath(fast);

Being that spiders have more than four legs, the outcome of any event of spiders in my house should be obvious. I’ve never had to worry about applying the rule outside of my home until this week.

I first noticed single strands of webbing in my car on the daily commute last week. A new single strand every day. Fine. I’m not going to waste my time looking for it. I figured that if multiple listenings to the pre-production copy of ‘Days From Evil’ didn’t kill it, the extended holiday weekend would. So, I left my black car with the black interior parked outside in the sun, with the windows up all weekend long.

“Live through *that*,” I thought to myself.

Something did.

I was cruising back from Caribou Coffee today when I saw it. A spider. A big spider. I mean, like Big, OK? He was hungry from the lack of food, deranged from all the heat, and pissed off from going cold-turkey off a Jagged Spiral binge.

Hungry, Deranged and Pissed.

And BIG.

Of course, I did what any rational person would do. I leaped at it.

OMFG! ITS FUCKING HUGE! I’ve only seen spiders that big in the movies! WHERE’S MY GUN?!!!

As I wrestled with the mutant spider in the backseat (My ColdPress Coffee in one hand and steering the car with my foot, thank you very much). Other drivers on the highway were, shall we say, Not Impressed with my ability to multitask. Thankfully, I had the windows open, and yelled at the nearest car.

“Help! Help! Call 911! I’m being carjacked by an Arachnid! The pistol isn’t big enough! Someone throw me a Nailgun!”

Of all the days Not to bring my fucking Nailgun. If we were in California, someone would have passed me a shotgun or harpoon gun or something. But here in Minnesota, you yell for help and people just pretend not to hear you.

Did I mention it was Fast too? Yes, it was Hungry, Deranged, Pissed-Off and Quick spider. And BIG. Did I mention it had a tattoo of a person on it’s leg?

The damned thing got away too. I barely escaped with my coffee, although I really didn’t need it after a refreshing wrestle with a giant spider.

I’ve decided to burn the car and walk home. I’m also taking up Tae Kwon Do again. My next car will have a handy place to keep a spare nailgun.

KTHXBYE,
-CZ