As a Gomez fan, I find it amusing that I dire tribed about Gomez's release that year - How We Operate (easily their least successful album creatively in my eyes) - with this monologue of bullshit:
Best Track: See The World
Defintely one of the best breakthrough albums that any band could ask for. Certainly not as good as some of their previous work, but still very high up there, How We Operate helped smash Gomez through that difficult American market. They played on Leno! (Well, I think it was Leno). They've had two songs feature on Grey's Anatomy. They had sell out shows again. Look, this band just goes from strength to strength - although behind the scene's talks hinder that theory - and with this album they'll just keep soaring. However, this is the third Gomez album I've found which the track listing has hindered the appreciation of the album a little. But, that's just me being nitpicking. This is a truly great album and I've found that it's the one I go to when I'm stuck for something to listen to in the car - either that or Desert Lights. Sure, being a major Gomez fan does help that a little, but having your favourite band release a cracking album does make your day. And as was touted on the Gomez forum, 2006 really was year of the Gomez. (Although, not entirely with them only making No. 5 on my top 10 for 2006 - I blame that on Charley Patton Songs).
Fantastic crap! The album of the year that year went to the justifiable Desert Lights by Something for Kate. A great album that still doesn't disappoint.
The worst film that year for me was Suburban Mayhem. It has stuck as being the worst film of all time in my eyes. Not only is it an awful film, it's an evil film that has no conscience. I know this is a stupid thing to say considering the fact that I watch a fair few films that have no conscience - but usually those films at least know full well that they don't have a conscience and haven't gained a group of fans who blindly love the film without a good reason. I'm yet to meet someone who absolutely falls head over heels for The Human Centipede 2: The Full Sequence. And if I do meet someone who falls head over heels for it, I'll walk the other way.
Here's what I had to say about Suburban Mayhem back then...
I've never really been this offended by a film since, well, Conspiracy Theory and the animated Peter Pan. How this can get the accolade's it has in Australia is beyond me. Disgusting, offensive, purely unenjoyable, a black mark for everyone involved. Words cannot describe how awful this film really is. Well, actually, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes closest to being what it was like. As if someone has told you to sit down, open your mouth, they whip out their dick and just piss all over your face. Then they shit on your head. And then kill your dog whilst your at it. And make a killing for it. Whoopa! That's entertainment!
I stand by what I said back then. I've seen it since then and it's still an awful film. The main offending sequence is the part where a character is bashed to death with a cricket bat - at least I remember it being a cricket bat. The death isn't the bad thing, the bad part is the fact that a child is in the scene on the floor watching the whole thing. Usually they'd shoot the sequence of the child separate and cut in the death to give the illusion that the child was there, but with Suburban Mayhem it pans from the crying child to the man being bashed. There was no need for that.
Maybe I get upset about pointless things in films too often. Not logical things either. The Australian film Look Both Ways - an ok movie which was directed by the very talented Sarah Watt who made the much better My Year Without Sex - features a sequence where two characters meet each other and start talking. Whilst they talk it pours down with rain - and I'm not talking a regular shower, it's a proper downpour.
Whilst the film is good, this sequence alone rendered the film unwatchable for me. There was simply no need to have a downpour in that sequence. It added nothing to the film at all. The film was filmed at a time when NSW was going through one of its worst droughts in years. Maybe it was Sarah Watt's influence from romantic comedies - of which Look Both Ways is not - where characters meet and it starts to rain that she decided to include the rain. It was an irresponsible inclusion in the film and completely unnecessary.
I used to write about random things on my livejournal. Crap that really didn't mean anything. Now I've taken to writing short amounts of crap on facebook daily. I do wonder if people really think I'm a nutjob at times, but then I look at myself in the mirror and realise that I face the day looking halfway between a homeless person who was taken in by a blind hipster. Which is not to suggest that I am a hipster at all - not that it would matter, hipsters are people too after all and we should all be thankful for hipsters because nobody wants to sleep with a hipster because they're a hipster. Not even hipsters want to sleep with hipsters because sex is just not in right now. Especially with gonorrhea being so popular and hard to get rid of nowadays. So, with no hipsters sleeping with no hipsters, there'll be less hipsters because essentially they'll breed themselves out of existence.
Sure, there'll be the odd hipster who phases out of being a hipster and grows into an old person who has grandchildren and talks about the times when he listened to cassette tapes because nobody loved them anymore. And those grandchildren will think that their grandfather was so cool back then, even though they have no idea what a cassette tape is. So they take up being hipsters. They cringed at the time when their parents thought that bringing back the fashion of the eighties was a good idea, shoulder pads and all. But hipsterism looks cool. It's got elements of the eighties, but lacking the shoulder pads. And then they'll not breed because sex will have once again gone out of favour after the great giant pubic lice epidemic of 2038.
Hipsters nowadays are good for society. If you think about it, they're bringing back the best things of the past and integrating them perfectly with the present. Record players with iPod attachments. Typewriters that transfer the data to your computer. Collectible teapots that you can plug in. All of this shit would have died out if it weren't for hipsters. As I said earlier, their lack of breeding is also great. With the world population a few Juno's away from hitting seven billion, the more hipsters the better. I won't get into the need for population control, but all I'm saying is that whoever finds the actual recipe for Soylent Green and makes it popular is a kind of hero to me.
At the end of this rambling mersyndol fueled rant, I guess I wonder whether I should get back into writing. I've not tried to write anything for a while, but maybe I'll kickstart myself - and my wonderful wife - into writing more stuff. If you have made it this far and received your five dollar bribe in the mail, sound off in the comments if you'd like to read a short story or two from me.
For now, here's a photo of me after I've landed from a skydive.
