Smodcast!
It’s Monday afternoon after school but I am not yet pressured enough to start my homework. On an ordinary week, I would be listening to the new Smodcast.
Smodcast is a weekly podcast show hosted by writer/director Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier. These two have been in the film making business since the early 90’s with Clerks, a 30 thousand dollar black and white epic about working at a convenience store. Clerks quickly became famous for being funded independently by the artists who maxed out a dozen credit cards, and featuring actors with no experience.They have made many more movies since, including Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Clerks II. In Smodcast, the two heroes sit down to talk for 50 minutes every week about their childhood, jobs, psychology experiments, their gay friend Malcom, and pose elaborate theories and sometimes even conspiracies based on their inaccurate knowledge of history and geography.
Unfortunately the production of their next movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, has temporarily halted the production of new Smodcasts and helped produce the only boring Smodcast to date, Episode 44. This episode’s featured guest Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith were seemingly uninterested and exhausted from the filming the movie. Luckily, I enjoy old Smodcasts enough to grant them a re-listen. Smodcast features very obscene language, and (I’m guessing) does not cater to those who don’t find films like Clerks funny.
Scott Mosier and Kevin Smith are both gifted storytellers, and it comes as no surprise that Smith wrote all of the genius dialog in his movies.
Smodcast can be heard through http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/ as well as iTunes for free.
Monday 25 Feb 2008 | eehoc09 | Uncategorized
Dogma was one of my most memorable movies i’ve seen!
i’ve blogged about it when i was in 9th grade http://soojinl10.kiswrites.org/?s=dogma&x=0&y=0 (grammar probably sucks but lazy to fix)
never had any idea that that team was a such a great group (the two men from your earlier link looked familiar!)
actually it’s this link http://tinyurl.com/389dmg
Dude, you’ve got GarageBand. Why not start podcasting yourself? (On my blog you’ll see all my own podcasts by clicking on the Podcast label in the sidebar. I’m focusing more on production values now, and honestly, want to start venturing into other territories besides education.)
If you want or need tips and software recommendations for recording Skype calls, etc, just drop by. I would hope Ms. Porter would accept podcasts instead of written posts, since blogs are about all the language arts - speaking as well as writing - and since podcasting is an art form when done with decent standards of quality.
Patrick Nam is doing some interesting podcasting on his blog, interviewing people all over the world. So far he’s setting the standard at KIS.
Your favorite Bowie album, by the way? Mine would be maybe a tie between Low, Station to Station, and in a different way, Scary Monsters and the obscure by interesting Lodger. I stopped listening to him when he went too mainstream with Let’s Dance, and haven’t listened since.
If you like innovators, have you ever explored the career of Tom Waits? Another changeling both in persona and style. Went from being a thin-voiced folk singer to something closer to what I can only describe as “Louis Armstrong on acid.” Listen chronologically and you’ll watch one wild career.
Film: John Cassavettes (independent master from LA, died at 50, unfortunately).
By the way - it’s a convention now to link to things like the smodcast site. Helps the lazy explore what you’re talking about. And also, via Technorati, alerts the site that you have written about it. Connections can happen that way, and networks form.
My favorite Bowie album is probably “Heroes”, with Low and Lodger being close seconds. And I really like most of the others too, especially Hunky Dory.
As for Tom Waits, I actually only own one album of his- Closing Time. I have heard Alice, Rain Dogs, and Real Gone many times through my friends and I have been meaning to get them for a long time. I guess I am somewhat already listening to his career chronologically being that I only have his debut album.
Yeah, I though about adding Heroes. Beauty and the Beast, Sons of the Silent Age (especially SotSA) and more - awesome album. The title song itself never did much for me, though.
Alright, so a challenge. Knowing a bit about my tastes, and now knowing that I just don’t keep up with the pop world at all any more - who, from the last 20 years, might fit into the creative category of a Bowie or a Bjork or Waits that I wouldn’t know, since I’ve dropped out?
Recommendations from people with similar tastes often turn up new loves.
Mason Jennings, by the way, a folk-singer/songwriter nobody knows, wrote a CD call “Use Your Voice” which is my biggest love of the last 3 years. FYI.
And have you checked out Leonard Cohen?
Leonard Cohen is my favorite songwriter.
Have you seen the new(ish) concert documentary titled Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man?
I saw it because I read that Nick Cave was in it, but it also opened eyes to a lot of other artists like Martha and Rufus Wainwright (children of Loudon Wainwright III), Antony, and Beth Orton.
As for inventive, I would say my favorite inventive album of the best 20 years is probably “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine even though they are sort of a one-hit wonder and I’m not really sure whether or not you would like them.
I’ll check out Mason Jennings.
I love Leonard Cohen too. He collaborated once with one of my favorite French rock bands, Noir Desir. If you have skype I can send you the song.
I actually wrote a post about duende and Nick Cave semi recently. You’d like PJ Harvey if you don’t already listen to her. Her and Nick Cave did a couple songs together.
Rufus Wainwright is pretty good, but as far as new(ish) folk goes, Sufjan Stevens is my favorite. My Bloody Valenine was good for a while, now I’m just getting too much of a mainstream vibe (which I hate).
If you’re into Bowie/new wave stuff, I’d recommend Metric. I’m not sure if you’re into the indie rock scene, but Rogue Wave is definitely really good too.
I am a music fiend, and I literally could go on forever, but I have to go to class. GET SKYPE AND SEND ME YOUR SCREEN NAME. We can swap songs. Go do that. Now.
Good god, man, we musical twins. Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen are two of the highest bards in my pantheon.
I just decided not to sing “Into My Arms” from what, The Boatman’s Call?, to my fiancee to end our wedding b/c it’s too gloomy and would probably cause my fanatical mother-in-law-to-be to die of a heart attack with that first line, “I don’t believe in an interventionist” etc (fill in the blank).
But Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and Joni Mitchell do lyrics like few others I’ve known can do. If we have a future, they should be remembered alongside Beethoven and Miles Davis.
I haven’t seen the Cohen documentary. Do you have it? I’ll lend you my Nick Cave documentary for a trade. Cohen’s an interesting guy (though mediocre lately, imho).
Don’t know “My Bloody Valentine.” Have the cd? Loan? I’ll trade back if you want to play that way.
I had a college professor - Humanities guy - who taught us, in one semester, African sculpture, the first 26 pages of Joyce’s _Finnegan’s Wake_ (we spent a literal month on that), and best of all, jazz from its inception to the beginnings of bop.
He was a jazz musician himself, in addition to being a political activist and scholar. Bill Cadbury was his name, and if he’s alive, I hope he’s well. Because he gave us students a tape of the finest songs from his own jazz collection - 120 minutes - and had us write analyses of solos by the great sax, trumpet, and vocal stylists of that era. We spent a month on that too.
I don’t remember the African sculpture, nor much about Finnegan’s Wake (though the memories of diving into those depths so deeply I dreamed of them are fond) - but the jazz turned out to be one of the most important benefits of my education. I’ve got my own jazz passion today and the wealth that gives, thanks to that teacher. He enriched my life. Education should do that more. It sucks, to me, how instead it seems geared to think of wealth only in terms of career incomes.
Somehow that fits here. I don’t know how. I guess just in relation to the music exchange offer. If we have similar tastes, we should feed on each other’s collections.
Oh, I see the incomparable Miss K-W has visited. Lindsea is my favorite student. Too bad she’s in Hawaii and I’ve never met her. She’s changing the world and becoming a rock star in the process. Having fun, doing good.
Lindsea, Rufus Wainwright is lame compared to his veteran father, Loudon Wainwright III. His History CD is beautiful at times, infectious fun at others. Closer to folk with a country twang. Loudon wrote a song for Rufus when Rufus was a newborn called “Rufus is a Tit Man” that is priceless.
Send me some of those samples too, knucklehead.
My blog would be full of comments if I just get in touch with a metal-mania bloggers… the area of music you guys are talking about are my least favorites.. triste
I agree with Linsea that everything My Bloody Valentine has ever done other than “Loveless” is useless, but it’s pretty hard to think up someone as creative as Waits and Bowie from the past 20 years. There have been guys like Aphex Twin and Les Claypool, but they’re not really the master conventional-ish songwriters that Waits and Bowie are.
I actually own neither the documentary nor a CD copy of “Loveless”. I rented the documentary a long time ago and borrowed Loveless from a friend then downloaded it. I do have a badly scratched up copy of the I’m Your Man soundtrack, which I would be more than happy to lend.
And I figure I’ll get skype eventually. But I’m just tired and don’t feel like it today.
I love Aphex Twin, especially Xtal. If you’re into electronica, you should check out Faded Paper Figures (http://www.myspace.com/fadedpaperfigures). They’re this unsigned band from California. What’s your email? We should send some music to each other.
We should. We should.
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