I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for the XBOX 360 at Best Buy last night. I also bought Madonna's new album, Hard Candy; the new Portishead album, "Third"; and the debut Santo Gold album, which was surprisingly on display right out in front at the store. That's pretty cool for such a mainstream place as Best Buy (the way the Santo Gold album was displayed, I mean). I will blog about all of that later.
When you begin playing GTA 4, you hear a very catchy song that is in Russian or German or both, I can't tell. I don't speak either of those languages. I know eins, zwei, drei is German for one, two, three (thanks to songs by Atari Teenage Riot about burning Berlin or something like that).
The song is "Schweine" (Pigs) by Glukoza aka Natalia Ilinichna Ionova. The song is from a 2005 album called Moskva (Moscow).
Here is the catchy song ...
You can download the song here (this link was updated on 5-13-2008). Here are some badly translated English lyrics from her official site.
You can watch the music video of the song on YouTube ...
So far the game is a lot of fun. GTA: San Andreas was the most fun I had ever had on the PS2 (until other games like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy XII came along ... but those games aren't as humorous as GTA) so GTA 4 has come along at a good time for me for the XBOX 360 since I am done with Lost Odyssey, which was a really great game.
EDIT ... This song reminds me of the song, "New Looks", by Dr. John that was featured in the scene of National Lampoon's European Vacation (Chevy Chase and Bevery D'Angelo) where the whole family is trying on dated clothing in Rome. It's a great cheesy fashion montage scene that movies from the 80s were full of. I should have the video soon.
EDIT (again) ... OK, here is the video ...
I don't know why I have never posted this song. It is one of my favorite's. I used an image from the end of The Matrix to go with the song. It seemed fitting.
I saw some photos of Gillian Anderson in Maxim on one of those entertainment shows like Entertainment Tonight or something like that. I actually can't remember which one it was. Anyway, she looks amazing in the photos, and I really liked her character, Scully, on X-Files who tried to be rational and skeptical even when aliens were all around her (she kind of caved in later in the series). Anyway, here are the photos with some cool Portishead songs to go with them.
Corrine Bohrer has been in a ton of movies, TV shows, and commercials. However, I will always think of her as Bobcat Goldthwait's love interest in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. Here is the best scene from the movie, where the two have a romantic moment ...
By the way, I use a PC. ;)
Corrine was also in "Vice Versa", where Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage change places in a "Freaky Friday" way.
Another song they have been playing lately at the bar I go to is Kylie Minogue's "In My Arms". When I first got the import of "X" a long, long time ago, I did not think much of this song, except for the fact that it had a really cool opening. However, after hearing the song in the club setting, it really has invaded my mind. The video is pretty cool, and I think they play some cool remix at the bar that makes it even better. Here is the song, along with some remixes and videos.
This song is actually quite old, but it is relatively new to me. I go to a bar that has a lot of TV screens and a large video screen, and they play some really cool videos. On Saturday nights, they always manage to work this song in, and it is always a crowd pleaser.
You can read all about Fedde Le Grand and Ida Corr on Wikipedia (they were both born in 1977 like me so they are automatically cool).
I am going to post different versions of the song here and some videos.
I went to a cool Italian restaurant last night in downtown Austin called La Traviata (just like Verdi's famous opera). It was pretty good. It's right next to Manuel's, a Tex-Mex restaurant that has decent mole sauce. I got the Rigatoni with Spicy Lamb Meatballs, and it was very good. My friends and I also got some Pinot Noir to drink with the meal, which is unusual for me because I never drink wine, and I am not a big fan of it. It was good, though. Anyway, here is the link for it ...
I have a friend who is obsessed with reading reviews of places on Yelp.com so here are the reviews for La Traviata on Yelp ...
http://www.yelp.com/biz/la-traviata-austin (some of the reviews are not so kind, but I had a good experience so I am hoping the bad reviews were based on rare circumstances)
To go with the theme of this post, here are my favorite parts of Verdi's opera, La Traviata (which is the opera they played in "Pretty Woman") ...
I make CD mixes or playlists all the time to play in my car. I can hook up my iPod to my car stereo, but the iPod is too bulky to leave in my car, and there is a cable attached to it so it kind of gets in the way. The day I can make a playlist and store it on a hard drive in my car will be a good day.
I make CD mixes that are 80 minutes long (the maximum length of time) using the iTunes playlist tool. However, sometimes I will use a Sonic CD burner program I have on my PC, and I will make a data disk, which can hold about 750 MB of songs or something like that. That's like 100-200 songs so it's really cool. Your car has to be able to play data disks, though.
Right now, I have a mix in my car that has two Tori Amos songs on it: Zero Point and Honey. However, I've had another Tori Amos song in my head lately, and that song is "Me & You", which is from a movie called "Hand of Fate".
Tori Amos - Me & You
The picture above is from this link. It's an article about a project Tori is a part of called "Comic Book Tattoo". I actually got an email about it from someone at toriamos.com or something like that. It made me feel all official. Ha!
http://www.toriamos.com/news/tori-amos-inks-comic-book-tattoo
http://undented.com/news/1442/image-comics-ink-on-comic-book-tattoo
My friends and I went to the Austin Art Alliance festival (called "Art City Austin") yesterday in downtown Austin. You basically just walk around and look at people's art. It's kind of neat to see the artists right there, though, and the thought of actually owning original works by an artist, instead of just prints of dead artists' work is interesting (I don't have the money for it right now, though). Anyway, there was one artist from the Houston, Texas area (I think he is from Katy, TX), named Stephen Dickerson, whose work we really liked.
Here are some examples of his paintings (which, I think he calls 2-Dimensional mixed media or somthing like that) ...
True Blood is a new show HBO will air sometime this year, I believe. Here are links on it ...
From IMDB ... The series follows Sookie Stackhouse, a barmaid living in Louisianna who can read people's minds, and how her life is turned upside down when the Vampire Bill, walks into her place of employment two years after vampires "came out of the coffin" on national television.
Sookie Stackhouse is played by Anna Paquin.
The guy behind it is Alan Ball, who did American Beauty and Six Feet Under.
It sounds kind of cool, but I am confused about why it is taking so long to air. I think it has something to do with the writers' strike. When you read the message board on IMDB, though, it sounds like people have already seen episodes of this show, but maybe it just seems that way (edit ... maybe they have just read the books).
The show is based on Charlaine Harris' "Southern Vampires Mysteries" books.
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.