Monday Morning Commute: Scream Sayonara!

July 11th, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

Ahoy! Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE – this is the spot where I share the bits of entertainment detritus that I’ll be rolling in over the course of the next few days! Sometimes it’s neat and tidy. Other times, it’s gross and ewh. In either case, after you stomp through my mind-muck, it’s your duty to hit up the comments section and detail what you’ll be up to.

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Re-Readin’/Heavy Liquid (Paul Pope)

I’ve started re-reading Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid in small, super-digestible bites and I must admit that it’s even better than I remember it. This is really saying something, since I’ve always had a soft spot for the comic. Pope tells the neo-noir tale of S, a man who not only stumbles into a vast amount of the ever-mysterious heavy liquid, but is also tasked with finding the only artist capable of sculpting it into Beauty. Mixing crime drama with futurism and psychedelia, Pope manages to convey a story about a man looking for his role in the world, whether through love or art or money or drugs or authenticity.

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‘Moneyball’ Trailer Is Porn For Film and Sport Geeks Like Me.

June 16th, 2011 by Caffeine Powered

If you like baseball, you know about Moneyball, the book by Michael Lewis about Billy Beane. There’s been a movie based on the book in the works for a while now, and our own Patrick Cooper gave me the heads-up on the trailer. I fucking love it. It’s got the Sexiest Man Alive, on-base percentages, and a little bit of the old human drama.

Hit the jump to check it out.

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Monday Morning Commute: By My Corrupt Soul!

June 12th, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

Hey there, welcome to Monday – the worst fucking day of the workweek! Tuesdays see the release of CDs and DVDs. Wednesdays are sacred, as comic books are released. Thursday is the last real workday, the final chance for bosses to make requests without being scoffed at. And Friday is a goddamn party – beers are drank and the ghettoblaster is cranked!

So how do we get through this most abysmal of days, this return to drudgery and serfdom? Well, we rock the Monday Morning Commute! This is the spot where I share what I’ll be doing in the upcoming days.

After you see which bits of entertainment form my anti-stress forcefield, it’s your duty to hit up the comments and tell me about your forcefield.

Let’s do this!

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Monday Morning Commute: memory-ill day

May 30th, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

[via]

Broadcasting from Omega Station Monstar on this most glorious of three-day weekends, I present MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! This weekly post is my excuse to show off the various ways I’ll be entertaining myself through the workweek. After you read about how I’m going tranquilize my desires to scream “BURN IT DOWN!” while crashing an ice cream truck into the post office, you should then hit up the comments section and tell me what you’re up to.

If I don’t have new things to do, there’s a strong chance the mail’s going to be late this week.

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Monday Morning Commute: DESTROY APATHY!

May 9th, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

Spark a cigarette and pour a drink – you’ve made it home after the first day of the workweek! Congratulations! You’ve only got to get through that 9-5 shitstorm four more times until the weekend! And from there it’s only a few more decades before you either retire into poverty or die! Ta-dah!

Fugg that, son. Life’s a glorious experiment, so let’s dance in the laboratory and smash some beakers! This here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, a weekly post dedicated to combating ennui. If you fear that you’re becoming one of the flesh-and-blood automatons that chokes Wonder to death, hop into this refugee-camp. I’m going to show you what I’m doing to destroy apathy.

If you’re daring, you’ll hit up the comments section and do the same.

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Readin’/Altered Carbon

Brought together by blood and kept together by our kindred spirits, Caffeine Powered and I have quite a bit in common. Hell, I can’t even begin to fathom how many hours we’ve spent on debating comics, movies, video games, and music. With that being said, we also have plenty of our interests, which we then try to get the other into.

It’s beautiful, man.

Over the weekend I (finally) started reading Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon. I’m just over fifty pages in and I can already see why Big Bro has been crushing on it for years. Having spent some of my most formative years poring over Frank Miller’s Sin City, I have a soft spot for hardboiled detective stories that this book is busting right into. Moreover, Morgan also knows how to flick the sci-fi clit, presenting a future in which consciousness has been digitized, Earth has colonies light years away, and minds are regularly downloaded into new bodies (“sleeves”).

I’m so fuggin’ sold on this book it hurts.

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Monday Morning Commute: Night Creature Posse

May 2nd, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

WELCOME TO THE   MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! FUGG YEAH, BOI!

Whoa. Sorry, I just lost my mind for a bit. Can you blame me though, life’s damn wonderful! Worth getting psyched up for! Also, I’ve been pounding caffeine all afternoon, so I scream in the irrational belief that it’ll keep my heart pumping.

Anyways. Posted on Monday evenings by a dude with less than fifteen minutes on his daily commute, this is the weekly show-and-tell at OL. I show you the bits of trivial nonsense I’ll use to numb the sting of indentured servitude. Then, like a good little doobie, you hit up the comments and tell me what you’re up to.

A failure to comply will result in the destruction of your homeworld. The Planet Smasher has been summoned. Don’t test me.

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Watchin’/The Ray Bradbury Theater


My list of heroes is occasionally amended, updated to account for new bad-asses revealing themselves and former titans falling from grace. But know who always has a spot on top? Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 is enough to secure Ray a permanent space, but the dude also has a million other sick-ass contributions to planet Earth that make him worthy. My personal favorites include The Martian Chronicles and The October Country.

My love for Bradbury recently led me to snag a DVD collection of The Ray Bradbury Theater, a Twilight Zone-styled TV show from the late `80s/early `90s. For $12, I got five discs (in crumby packaging) of pure cheesy sci-fi bliss. I watched three episodes this weekend, and despite the shoddy video quality and TV-series production value, this show fucking kills. Bradbury presents his retro-future parables, tales from the past about the future that perfectly capture the nuances of the human heart.

Check out the video posted above – an adaptation of And the Moon Be Still as Bright, my favorite selection from The Martian Chronicles. It stars David Carradine and reminds viewers that respecting and learning from other cultures trumps conquering them.

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Monday Morning Commute: One Life at a Time

April 11th, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

Dark days have descended upon the workweek. Just as the work continues to pile up, I come home feeling fatigued. Although a nap provides momentary refuge, when I return to fight the beast I find it just as formidable but ten times as pissed off. I forge ahead, knowing that that at the end of this five-day torture rack, I will fumble, exhausted and smiling, into a week-long vacation.

Don’t think I’m complainin’ – I know that most jobs don’t include occasional weeks off. But rest assured, my weeks off and relatively low wages are now considered by many the real problem with the nation’s budget. Yeah, it’s totally not the million-dollar missiles we’re hurling at countries whose conflicts we have no reason to get involved in.

Shit. I’m grandstanding. Back to the point. Welcome to the Monday Morning Commute, the spot where I show you what I’m doing this week. If all goes to plan, you then get so excited that you hit up the comments and share YOUR plans. Give’n'take, get it?

Lezrokk.

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Rockin’/The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues

BTBAM’s new EP drops tomorrow and I couldn’t be more excited. Okay, to be fair, I downloaded the leak last week, but there’s something about actually purchasing a CD that gets me fuggin’ amped. Artwork?! JEWEL CASE?! Wait, A DIGI-PACK!?!? OH SHIT!

Anyways, this three-song, thirty-minute release is goddamn dense. I’ve listened to it the full way through more than a few times, and I hear new bits every damn time. I think bassist Dan Briggs deserves mad respect – his parts fit cohesively into the audio canvas, but are kooky and insane when you listen for them.

This shit is like Bitches Brew for a new generation.

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Monday Morning Commute: Continue to CRUSH IT!

February 14th, 2011 by Rendar Frankenstein

This time next week, I’ll be on vacation. I’m hopping on the first shuttle out of Hoth and heading towards the glorious Cloud City. Once there, I plan on drinking forties with Lando and crusin’ the skies with Lobot. To top it all off, my babe’s going to be accompanying me, providing the Leia necessary to complete my Han Solo fantasy.

As long as I don’t wind up frozen in carbonite, it’s going to be a good time.

Unfortunately, this week is going to see me wading knee-deep in work-caca. So until first transport is AWAY!, I’m going to keep my mind pacified with all sortsa goodies. Check out what I’ll be doing this week, then hit up the comments and tell me what you’ll use to pass the (space)time(continuum).

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Rockin’ / Devin Townsend Project – LIVE EP (Free)

[obtain]

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Monday Morning Commute: Plastic Time Travel

December 6th, 2010 by Rendar Frankenstein

The phantom hides in the pantry, waiting for the child to awake. Always in the pantry. Always behind the cookies. The child, bleary-eyed and delirious with dream-dust, makes his way into the snack cabinet. His belly, constantly satiated by parents who know not of discipline, grumbles. Obeying, the child opens the cupboard door and reaches in to retrieve the chocolate-chip delights.

SNATCH!

Snack time.
For the phantom.

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Welcome, my babies, to the Monday Morning Commute. This is the place where we detail our agendas for the upcoming week. Avoid the drudgery of existence. Beat boredom into a pulp. Repel the Snack-Phantom. Let’s fuggin’ do this.

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Listening / A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra

In case you haven’t noticed the fleet of minivans parked at the mall indefinitely or the neighbors who think their front lawns are reasonable facsimiles of Times Square, let me clue you in: it’s Christmas time. Or holiday time. Or whatever. From my completely secular standpoint, I kind of wish we could all give up the bogus religious connotations of the Winter Solstice Festivals and agree on something new. One holiday to rule the all.

Anyways, I use a few different activities to get into the holiday spirit. Spending time with friends. Pounding eggnog by the liter. And most importantly, listening to seasonal music. Over the years I’ve run the gauntlet when it comes to Christmas tunes, from Jimmy Buffet to Savatage. Hell, if you don’t give yourself a chance to try the kookier coldcuts from the Christmas music antipasto, you’re really doing yourself a disservice.

This year, however, I’m going the route of the traditionalist. I took it upon myself to download a vinyl rip of A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra.

Holy Jesus-Birth, Santa, a digital transmission of a piece of plastic that was listened to by someone fifty-three years ago?!?! Somebody with hopes and dreams and a consciousness that has probably since faded back into the Universal Collective?!?

Yes, I even try to make my holiday activities about temporality-defiance.

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ZizZazz Won’t (Big) Hurt You!

November 5th, 2010 by Rendar Frankenstein

Everyone that tells the Brothers OL to lay off the caffeine and energy drinks can officially cram it!

Unless you were born in the 1800s, you undoubtedly realize that Frank Thomas is the greatest athlete of all time; check out the Big Hurt promoting the ultra-safe, certainly-good-for-you energy powder ZizZazz!

The energy boost was something I needed to play professional baseball.

That’s what we’re saying! Just about writing and reading and…uh…playing video juegos and whatnot.

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