LINKED: Somebody Found Earl


Well, it's not exactly hot-off-the-press with this article being published on April 14th, but we figure it's still worthy enough of being re-posted and re-blogged. To Earl: you may not have even the slightest hint of who we are, but we too are waiting patiently for your return (shit, is he Jesus or what?). On a different but related note, we have been posting for a number of times on Junk By Demand, (politely) requesting them to bring OFWGKTA to Malaysia. Not sure if anyone else in Malaysia is aware of the name Odd Future but as far as passing-mention, name-dropping, mini-raving, praise-heaping promotion goes, we have done our part.

Odd Future live in Malaysia: it has to happen.

Very Grammatic - Saturday-at-Starbucks-While-Waiting-for-Someone Ranting Edition


On a relatively related note, yesterday the Prime Minister spent more than an hour in the studio of a local radio station to talk on a number of things. Commendable effort I have to say in part of him to engage with the people, especially the young, since from my personal experience, the young adults are the ones that the Government has always been a bit mindful. I'm tempted to say scared, but that is probably half truth. But the one part that really caught my attention was that the PM sure does have a very good sense of humor - and humor, I want to absolutely stress here, is what Malaysia and Malaysians in general really need at the moment. We all seriously need to learn how to lighten up a bit. No - a lot.

To demonstrate the seriousness of the issue, let's take a gander at Maharaja Lawak, a 'sorta' reality television show about a bunch of comedians contesting for the coveted spot of the absolute king of comedy. (Student of linguistics will probably see the seriousness of the title 'maharaja' since it is a step up higher than 'raja'. 'Raja' is king, while 'maha' is, loosely translated, great. So - great king. See?) Every week, contestants are given three minutes to present their material to the audiences in studio (and also at home), and at the end of their performance, a host of jury or critics, will give their opinion. Pretty typical reality cum contest television show. The one downside to it is that you need to have Astro (paid satellite television), and a certain subscription to be able to watch it live. But this being 2011, Youtube is always a few hours update away, and this is where shit starts to go, erm, serious.

One of the contestants for the show is a duo of thick and thin 20-something guy who call themselves Balas. They are one of the contestants that I really liked because of the laid-back, almost spontaneous nature of their comedy. And the other being the double entendre - the duo's weapon of choice. We Malaysians like to think of ourselves as modest, reserved, prudish type of people who at the slightest hint of things of sexual nature will shy away into their own retreat and blush the entire night. Which is absolutely spot on I reckon for a society that has been traditionally consuming tongkat ali for better 'performance' in bed before it goes mainstream. Just browse through the endless barrage of comments from viewers at Youtube who outrightly expressed their discomfort (and some, disgust) towards the sexual nature of Balas' joke. They were all speaking as if sex is no longer a taboo but a sin - a voraciously, sinister, dirty dirty sin. The angels in the heaven must be flushing red up there.

I'm here not to slam these people for them making their comments but God, can't we at least try to be more open-minded. I mean yes, so it is not entirely suitable for family viewing lest your six year old daughter start to ask about what does it mean when a sword has gone 'uneasy'. But consider this one tiny bit of information - the show goes up live at ten, which if I'm not mistaken in British television world, it is the watershed. It's the magical hour where everything goes, where Gordon Ramsay is comfortably at home cooking up a shitstorm, where adults get to enjoy their um, adulthood. What are they doing at such a late hour? Tuck your kids in to bed. They already have the entire Saturday and Sunday morning reserved for their turn in front of the TV. Let the night hour be the for-adults-only hour. And more importantly, let the comedians rip out at the audience whatever the content may be. Because if it works, if it is funny, then let us enjoy our laugh. It's only a joke, and jokes have rarely cause hurt to anyone.

REVIEWED: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care by Explosions in the Sky


On the outset, it is pretty much business as usual for this Texan post rock quartet on their long-awaited sixth studio offering: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. Any casual listener would be forgiven into thinking that all of their previous five studio albums has all been, technically, pretty much the same: long compositions traversing over time continuum like an outer space expedition where everything seemed majestic and breathtaking. And for a while, we were fooled into thinking the same thing as well.

Four years in making is certainly quite a long time for any 'seasoned' band to come up with a finished mastered product, but with Take Care, the end result of it pretty much explains why the long gap. Again, technically speaking, Explosions is still like how they would have sounded four years ago on All of a Sudden..., and another four before that on The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. We're talking somewhere along the lines of familiarity here, so surely the nostalgia from the four year absence has been cured. But then; have they brought to table something new, something refreshing with this one?

To be brutally honest, we can't actually make out that much of a difference between Take Care and their last three albums (including 2005's The Rescue). They're all still filled with seven-minute-plus opus ready to blow your mind with explosions of colors (if you're under some influence); or if you're blind stinking sober, seven-minute-plus opus that is ready to bore you to death. But then you have to remember that this album takes four years in the making, so naturally it would take four years for anyone to actually get somewhere with it.

Give us another four years to (properly) make up our mind, then we'll tell you whether Take Care has been a real step up for Explosions. Read through reviews from other music critics and you'll quickly realize how almost all of them are lavishing praises on it - and that is probably because they are on a time warp or something. We're still treading our path slowly and carefully, and Take Care, while has its' magical moment, still sounds all too familiar.

Seriously: four years.

*Quiet-er Respite*



Whew, Sunday was tiresome. I'll have my post on Tampin up some time soon. But in the meantime, here's something to soothe my tortured eardrum. I found myself keep on saying: "My, what a voice". By the way, what the heck is wrong with FX HD? Why the endless, back-to-back run of Mad Men? I want my daily 11 p.m. serving of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia...

LINKED: Guilty as Well...


Thanks to Graph Jam for the image.