Ah yes, the sweet sound of The Misfits.  Well, not exactly...but Misfits songs.  Yep, as I type this I'm listening to the final mixes of the two Misfits songs the might NoiseCult recorded for the upcoming CD to raise money for the West Memphis 3.  And these mixes are hot off the presses...as in they were done today and I just got home with them to check them out in my own private studio.  Oh yeah, I have a killer listening environment for this stuff.  I have a three bedroom house - one room I sleep in, one room I listen to all my angry rock music while pumping away on my Bowflex machine, and one room I have my computer in complete with soundproofing and a pair of Tannoy monitors to do all my audio/video work in.  In doing soundproofing let me explain the biggest ripoff in the world - bass traps.  You see, in any room you're doing mixing and stuff in you need a bass trap to suck up all that low end that just travels around a room.  General soundproofing can suck up all the high end leaving you with a lot of things that sound like low level "WOOOM...WOOOOM!!!" over and over with every beat.  So what do you do?  You go to a music store and buy these giant pieces of foam that fit in the corners of the room that run about $30 each.  Oh well...they do the job.  Anyway, we recorded "Nike A Go-Go" and "Hatebreeders" and the final mixes came out pretty good.  See, when doing cover tunes I could care less about the precision or the production quality and stuff like that...all I want to do is capture the vibe of the song.  There has only been one band I have ever heard that did covers better then the original band that wrote them and that was Metallica doing the Diamond Head stuff...and that's it.  Other than those, don't try to outdo the people that wrote them...especially someone like The Misfits.  Granted, Metallica has recorded a few Misfits songs and have done them quite well, but I'll take the originals any day of the week.  The interesting thing will be to hear the other bands doing songs and how they sound.  While what we did aren't masterpieces, I think they kick ass...plus I can't even begin to explain how cool it was to record myself doing background vocals screaming out "Whoa-oh-OH...Hatebreeders-whoa-oh-oh" over and over...that rocked beyond belief.  Oh...and if you haven't checked yet...we put up samples of all the NoiseCult tunes over at the site....they only last like 40 seconds or so because they're supposed to tease you enough to order the CD...so go check them out at www.noisecult.com

Now how many people can you think of that are running for the U.S. Senate that talk about how cool it is to record Misfits songs?  None...spread the word...www.boforsenate.com  In the campaign blog I just added my thoughts on Senator Dick Durbin's remarks...what an idiot.

What a week this is going to be.  Yep, movie time!  Oh man...this coming weekend the master of all things zombie has chosen to bless us mere peasants with "Land of the Dead".  I can't wait...this week will drag by because of this.  To think the guy that basically created the genre of zombie movies will unleash his latest soon-to-be masterpiece is more than I can fathom.  Yeah I know there have been zombie movies before, but when George Romero came out with "Night of the Living Dead" many moons ago, it set the standard and brought zombie-ism into a whole new realm.  Since then, there have been a lot of HORRIBLE zombie movies, so it's great that he's putting out a new one to show everyone who the master is.  I can't wait to see it.  But that's not it...no there is another movie I'll be seeing this week that has me intrigued - the new Batman.   I'm not going to act like some life-long Batman fan here...but I was thinking back to when the first "Batman" movie came out with Michael Keaton.  Yes, by then I had read a bunch of the comics like "The Dark Knight" and those, but my experience with Batman was based on the TV show with Adam West.  I just always had a hard time getting into DC Comic guys...I was a Marvel dude.  On the DC side you have Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc...and on the Marvel side you have Spider Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four and Iron Man.  Granted the DC characters are kind of the staples of comic folklore, but I dug the Marvel guys better...they always seemed a little more troubled.  Ok, I know Bruce Wayne became Batman to enact vigilante justice and that's cool...but Marvel characters were people that were regular Joes usually that had something happen to thrust the life of superhero-dom on them.  Peter Parker is bit by a radioactive spider, Doctor Bruce Banner gets hit by gamma rays trying to save someone who was driving through the blast site, The Fantastic Four were on a space expedition and were blasted by cosmic rays...all victims of circumstance who had to battle the desire to live a normal life versus acting on their newfound powers.  That's the part I dug.  Ok, enough on that.  I went to see the first Batman knowing the whole "Dark Knight" thing and all that, but I wasn't about to act like I was a lifelong fan and look like every other Johnny come lately who decided to wear Batman t-shirts and everything...it was ridiculous.  I really dug the first one...in fact I'll never forget sitting outside one night with the girl who at that time was the love of my life getting into a deep discussion over Batman.  Yeah...the two of us were having many drinks and feeling pretty good and were talking about whether or not the Batman movie was good...yep....ok anyway.... The next Batman was alright and then they got worse culminating in that complete piece of crap with George Clooney.  I've got pretty high hopes for this one...after all, at it's core the story of Batman is one of vengeance and what guy in their right mind doesn't enjoy a good tale of righteous vengeance every now and then?  Up next in the superhero world is The Fantastic Four and that one scares me to death and that's because they are my favorite superhero group ever.  Oh sure, there were the X-Men, the Avengers, the Defenders, the Teen Titans, but nothing compared to the Fantastic Four in my little world.  It scares me because they already ruined The Hulk for me in Hollywood and this one makes me very nervous.  Just looking at it already, I have my reservations about Jessica Alba as Susan Storm.  The comics always made her out to be a bit older and, well, blonde.  Now Jessica was quite easy on the eyes in "Sin City" as a blonde, but for some reason just her whole demeanor seems wrong for Susan Storm...almost like she's too "cutesy" to play her.  The rest of the cast looks good, especially Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm aka The Thing.  But the previews already showed one big thing that will let me down...the origin of Doctor Doom.  In the comics Victor Von Doom was not on the spaceship pelted with the cosmic rays that gave these guys their powers yet he is in the movie.  Why do they always feel a need to alter something that's already been written and written well like a character's friggin origin???  Oh well.

And now for some random things that just really tick me off -
1) When you're on an elevator about to exit it...the doors open and someone just comes barreling in.
2) When you're in a line at a store behind someone on their little cell phone and the guy actually holds up a finger to the clerk as in "hold on just a sec, I'm on the phone".
3) When people coming down on-ramps to the interstate forget the whole concept of "yielding", as in you have to stop to let them in.
4) When you hear about a subject that's going to be on a news show you want to see...so you turn it on and they wait until the very last segment to do it.
5) When you rent a DVD and it's so scratched up it won't play...you sit down to watch it and it keeps freezing up and skipping...are people just sitting around with knives hacking these things up when they get bored???  I can't see WHY they would be so scratched up.
6) When people claim that they're "spiritual".  What in the heck does that mean???  "I don't believe in God really, but I'm a spiritual person"......HUH???
7) Anytime Bill or Hillary Clinton open their mouths.
8) When the batteries in a remote start to go and you have to point it directly at whatever device you are using instead of laying on the couch like a slug and just pointing the remote anywhere and it works.
9) When people bring "awareness" to an issue.  They aren't really doing anything to solve the problem...they just feel good making people aware of it.  "Well I just think we need to raise the awareness on the issue of poverty"...well thank you because I never knew it existed.
10) When someone at work sends out a mass email asking a question like "we're thinking of doing something for so and so's going away deal on Friday...anyone interested in pitching in for pizzas?" or something like that...and you get 50 people who do a "reply all" so for the next hour you're opening emails with "Count me in" and crap like that when it should only be going back to the person who originated the email.
11) Those "Johnny Reality" guys...you know...they're just keeping it real with their shaggy hair and t-shirts and baggy jeans...usually with some homemade rope necklace or bracelet all acting like individuals with their own style even though they ALL look like that.

Alright...enough for now.  Until next week....including my long-awaited review of "Land of the Dead".