Women in Rock? Women DO Rock!

I've spent most of my life seeking out female role models in the world of rock 'n' roll, usually to be disapointed by the "VH1 Top 100 Women in Rock." Have you noticed that, about 90 of those women don't really "rock" at all? If you think Lisa Loeb or Alanis Morisette represent women's ability to bring the noise, you are missing out on what true female rockers are made of. Unfortunately, the women who hold their own in this male-dominated genre go mostly undiscovered by those of us who need that kind of inspiration. However, every so often, a female musician comes along that makes me proud of my gender and want to kick some ass in the pit.

On November 21, 2008 I headed down to 924 Gilman (again) and spent a few hours with some very intense and hard-rockin' women.

The show was a five-band bill consisting of Strains of the Apocalypse, California Love, Lack of Interest, Voetsek, and Mind of Asian. No shortage of fast punk rock in this setting.

I have nothing to say about Strains of the Apocalypse and California Love. Both bands lacked the energy and power I was burning for that night. They did nothing to excite my soul. They were forgettable, at best.

Lack of Interest is usually a fast and furious 20 minutes of mayhem, but they were off the mark on this particular night. Some might blame technical issues on their lack-luster performance, the guitarist could not set the borrowed amp to his liking. I would have to disagree with the problem being technical though. I've seen Lack of Interest a few times and they are always a hit-or-miss kind of band. I've seen them blow everyone away with their overabundance of energy and I have seen them just "phone it in." This show was just another flop for them.

By the time Voetsek took the stage, I was starting to regret bringing my friend to this show, since I promised him a night of crazy fun. Luckily, Voetsek salvaged my reputation by showing everyone how it's really done. Here's where the female musician stuff comes into play. Voetsek is female-fronted with a female bass player. This band kicks ass! They are thrash metal gods! While the overall sound of Voetsek is amazing, it's the raspy, balls-out screaming of lead singer, Amy Lawless, that really pushes the band over the edge. Their energy is through the roof and they never disappoint.

The headliner of the night was Mind of Asian, an all-female Japanese hardcore band. Here is an example of how women bring the noise. They are not, "good for a girl-band." They are awesome, period. These ladies fully encompass all that I love about my gender. They are fast and tight and not afraid to run with the boys. They showed up every penis-touting band in the club that night. Who says girls don't know how to thrash?

UGZ Speed Trials 2008

On March 22nd, 924 Gilman Street in Berkley hosted the 5th Annual UGZ Speed Trials. Eight bands blasted their way through less than four hours of short, fast, and loud. Each band was given a 15 minute set limit in which to prove to the raucous crowd of punk rockers that they were the fastest and best band of the night. All of the bands lived up to the Speed Trials legend.

In 2002, Urban Guerrilla Zine started the Speed Trials in order to showcase some of the bands they had been promoting for. Voetsek won the first ever Speed Trials and the show has continued every year since.

This year's winner was Pretty Little Flowers from Texas. They played tight and fast and had the crowd in a frenzy by the second song. P.L.F. has been around since 1999 and have partnered with the likes of Uzi Suicide and Unholy Grave for split 7" releases.

Although they one second place instead of first, Noisear stole the show with their unbelievable showcase of what it means to be a grind band. With layered and varying vocal styles, sung by the three up front, and a blasting, popping snare sound, this band brings the speed. They gave the best performance of the night.

Another star of the night that deserves mentioning is Thousandswilldie from the Bay Area. Their songs were a bit too short, even for the Speed Trials, clocking in at 20 to 30 seconds each. They fit 25 songs in their 15 minute set, including the time it took to pour fake blood all over the crowd and light the drum set on fire. Twenty seconds is just not long enough to get into a song, especially when the singer has such an awesome, piercing vocal style.

Self Inflicted opened the night and Superbad, In Disgust, and 50/50 also filled the evening with mayhem. Despise You closed the night with an extra long set. They played their alloted fifteen minute set as well as Lack of Interest's spot, since they didn't bother to show up. It was never mentioned why the headliner of the night never made it to the show, but since Lack of Interest is from sunny So. Cal, they will probably be back this way soon.

You Think You Love Movies?

Some people have a passion for football, some a passion for art. Jason Alley has a passion for movies, all movies. He has seen 337 movies (new to him) this year and the year isn’t over yet. He has see somewhere between 120 and 150 movies in the theater. This is average for Jason. For a long time, his daily routine has been to wake up, exercise, watch a Netflix movie while eating breakfast, go to see a movie at the theater, then head to his job as manager of an independent movie theater. That is a daily routine, every day, Monday through Friday.

When he was six, Jason went to see Gremlins. It is one of his earliest memories of falling in love with movies. “I was terrified to go see it because it was the first movie I went to that wasn’t G rated, and I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I knew that it would be something different than what I had seen before. I even made my mom sit in the back row with me so that I could run out of the theater if I got too scared.” He didn’t get too scared. In fact, Gremlins, as well as The Never Ending Story and Goonies, were the three movies influenced his obsession. “That period in my life, watching those movies, it swept me away. I was hooked on the way movies take you to a different place mentally and emotionally.”

Jason keeps all of his movie ticket stubs, all of them. When he was in high school, he kept a chart on his wall where he gave a star rating to every movie he watched, from zero to four. When he got his first computer, he built his own, simple website where he wrote movie reviews. Seven year later, he is still doing it. “I just like putting my opinion out there, I like reading other people’s opinions. I like debating about stuff.” Check it out.

Jason loves movies so much that he got a job at an independent movie theater. He has been managing the Crest Theater in downtown Sacramento for four years. When he was younger, he wanted to direct movies, but after taking some college courses, he realized that there was a lot of technical stuff involved in directing and decided it wasn’t for him. He has thought about writing a screenplay, but is perfectly happy just watching. “To quote John Cusack in High Fidelity, “I’m a professional appreciator.”

Although Jason loves all genres of movies, his favorite is the horror genre. He says horror films instantly take him back to his childhood and why he fell in love with movies. He goes to the Fangoria Convention, which is the biggest horror convention in the United States, every year. “There’s just something about being a horror movie buff that’s different than being a fan of other kinds of movies. When you get two horror movie geeks in a room together, it’s almost like a religious conversation.”

As a child, Jason and his brother bonded over their love of movies. “We had this thing in 1990 when I was in sixth grade and my brother was home after his first year in college and we called it the summer of a thousand movies because we went to the movies every day. And when there wasn’t anything new to see, we would just go see Arachnophobia. We probably saw that movie 12 times that summer.”

What is the favorite movie of someone who watches well over 300 movies every year? Well, for Jason its George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic, Dawn of the Dead. “I remember the first time I watched it, about halfway through I thought ‘This is something like I’ve never seen before. When you watch a movie that you really love, you get that certain buzz that you don’t get from watching a regular movie.”

What is his least favorite movie? Da Hip-Hop Witch. Rent it on Netflix.

This is the Way the World Ends

After watching Richard Kelly’s newest sci-fi, time travel film, Southland Tales, I left the theater feeling a little sick to my stomach, my head hurt, and my heart was pounding. These were all for good reasons, I swear. I can’t explain what Southland Tales invoked in me, but it was exhilarating.

Richard Kelly earned a cult following after writing and directing his sci-fi, time travel film, Donnie Darko. This movie gained little acclaim at the box office, but it skyrocketed the acting career of its star, Jake Gyllenhaal and fueled an underground fan base. Donnie Darko was a surreal story of a teenager’s journey through life (and time). I had to watch it five times to even start to get what was going on, but I absolutely loved it anyway. Southland Tales does the same thing.

Set in Los Angeles in the near future, Southland Tales tells of a nuclear attack hear on United States soil and the oppressive legislation that follow the tragic day. It also tells of a war machine running out of fuel, literally. It tells of a (mad) scientist who discovers how to harness the ocean’s constantly moving energy. And it tells of time travel and its potential effects on the end of the world.

T.S. Elliot wrote, “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” Our narrator, played by a facially scared Justin Timberlake, relays the message that Elliot was wrong. The world ends with a big bang caused by a rift in the time/space continuum. Kelly’s vision of the end of existence is full of indecipherable messages and factions of wing nuts who all want to run the country their own way.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who just goes by Dwayne Johnson for this movie, plays a high profile action star and husband to a republican presidential candidate’s daughter (Mandy Moore) who goes missing for three days and awakes in the desert with amnesia. He hooks up with a porn star turned talk show host played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Johnson’s character, Boxer Santaros, writes a screenplay about the end of the world, not realizing how real his fiction tale is.

At the same time, in another part of town Roland Taverner, played by Seann William Scott, is experiencing amnesia as well. He is helping the neo-Marxist group stage a murder that they plan to use as blackmail. He had to be reminded by members of the neo-Marxists that he has taken the identity of his twin brother as a police officer in order to trick Santaros into being involved in the crime. The two unwittingly end up staging the events that end the world.

As the events of the story unfold, so does all ability to understand the plot at all. But it is still a wonderful movie. Like David Lynch or Federico Fellini, Kelly’s film is an abstract art, beautiful to look at, emotionally stirring, but impossible to understand. The artist will tell you that his intent was clearly laid out with that brush stroke up in the left corner, but you will still walk away from it wondering what it was you were looking at. The important thing to remember when watching Southland Tales is not to try to understand the details, but to soak in the stunning canvas and let your emotions guide you through.

Girls Kick Ass!

When you think of action stars, whom do you think of? Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, Charles Bronson, Jackie Chan, The Rock, even Governor Schwarzenegger. The list of actors one considers action stars goes on and on. Where are the female action stars? Sure, there have been plenty of women who have starred, or more likely co-starred in action movies, but very few of them would be considered action stars. It is time to re-evaluate what makes and action star, and why it seems to always have to be male dominated.

Many women have proven their ability to be box office hits as action stars in the past. Actresses such as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, Sigourney Weaver in the Aliens Trilogy, Angelina Jolie as Laura Croft in Tomb Raider and Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil have all played lead roles in these highly successful films where they take center stage as action heroes. They have shown that women can portray fighting skills, weapons proficiency, and brute strength just as convincingly as their male counterparts. It is clear that, with the right screenplay and directing, women are not the box office poison that movie executives seem to think they are.

Let’s start with the ideal action hero. Opinions differ, but we can agree on most of the general aspects. Our hero should be able to drive at speeds of 100 mph or more, or at least be able to look really tough on a motorcycle. They should be able to outrun major explosions and push innocent victims out of the line of projectile shrapnel. They should deliver unbelievably cheesy lines with complete conviction. They should be able to look good, even when they are covered in blood and dirt. They should be able to beat up any number of bad guys that come at them in a given scene. They should always be proficient with at least five different types of weapons (most especially, a bazooka). And they should talk in a low, raspy voice to show just how tough they are (with the exception of Vin Diesel, he talks like a Muppet, but still kicks ass).

Of the minimal list of characteristics that one could assume would make for an ideal action hero, not one of them are exclusive to the male population. Let’s use Milla Jovovich as an example (she has starred in more action films that any other female). She has, in her various movies, looked really cool on a motorcycle, outrun exploding buildings, convincingly said some pretty awful lines, looked great covered in blood and dirt, beat up groups of genetically altered bad guys, blown away all kinds of stuff with all kinds of guns, not to mention her moves with a sword, and has even used the raspy voice when she was really pissed off.

Knowing that women can do anything men can do when it comes to being an action hero, there doesn’t seem to be much of an argument for why there are not more of them. Sure, there have been a few female-fronted flops like cat-woman and Electra, but there are also plenty of male dominated stinkers like Daredevil and anything starring Dolph Lundgren.

Young girls need role models to look up to too. Women should no longer settle for the secondary action characters. Writers should stop creating roles that, for no legitimate reason, have to be filled by men. Movie executives should take a look at the box office numbers when deciding whether to take the risk on a film starring women. This could be just another way in which women could rise above the inequality that continues to thrive in this nation and show the newer generations that girls DO kick ass.

"Pushing Daisies" is a Bouquet of Fun

ABC is in full bloom this fall with its whimsical new show, “Pushing Daisies.” The newest creation by Brian Fuller, writer of “Dead Like Me” and “Wonderfalls,” is brimming with freshness and originality. The highly stylized and bright color scheme makes this show seem like a child’s storybook tale, which contrasts nicely with the overall theme, death.

Within the first few minutes of the pilot, a nine-year-old boy named Ned witnesses his beloved dog, Digby, getting run over by a semi-truck. Ned discovers his gift after bringing Digby back to life by touching him. The sweet melody of the soundtrack mixed with soothing narration by the familiar voice of Jim Dale (performer of the “Harry Potter” audio books) makes this tragedy light-hearted. Even though young Ned proceeds to accidentally kill his childhood-crush’s father, and then his own mother, you never feel sad for the boy because it all seems like a candy-filled dream.

The basic plot of “Pushing Daisies” is that Ned can bring people back to life by touching them. The twist is that if he touches them again, they will die, but if he doesn’t touch them again within 60 seconds, then someone else nearby will have to take their place. This makes for an interesting love story since he had to bring his long-lost sweetheart, Charlotte Charles (Chuck) back to life.

Ned grows up to become a pie maker. He helps fund his burgeoning business by moonlighting as a detective with his partner, Emerson Cod, (Chi McBride). He brings murder victims back to life just long enough to find out who killed them, and then he collects the reward.

Lee Pace, who plays Ned, gives the character just the right amount of innocence and vulnerability. Chuck, played by Anna Friel, is a spunky, fun-loving character and you can see why Ned had been pining for her for 20 years. Olive Snook, played by Kristen Chenoweth often steals the scene with her unusual obsession with Ned (she is known to break out in song when feeling especially heartbroken).

The witty dialogue is delivered with great timing by all involved and the punch lines are often laugh-out-loud funny. Visually, “Pushing Daisies” is like watching panda bears eat giant lollipops. And, unlike some of the other death-themed shows like “Ghost Whisperer” and “Medium,” it makes light of taboos that are normally handled with kid gloves.

A Vision of Students Today

The advances in technology have simultaneously connected nations to each other and isolated individuals from their next-door neighbor. Children know more about computers than their parents. Teachers are losing touch with ways to keep their student’s interest. The digital age is constantly reinventing itself and leaving older generations in the dust.

Use of computers and the Internet in the classroom has been an ongoing discussion between school boards and parents for a few years now. The lack of proper training among teachers, and the seemingly over abundance of knowledge about computers that students have is increasingly become a wedge that keeps technology from working in the classroom.

The younger generations are becoming more computer-savvy all the time. Only a decade ago, handheld computers were an oddity. Now, anyone can access the Internet with gadgets the size of a calculator. Kids want the newest trend and the trend is technology.


Many states across the U.S. have started programs to supply laptops for students called the 1-to-1 Initiative. The hope is that students with personal computers will be less likely to skip school and be more engaged in classroom learning. In May of 2006,New York enacted the 1-to-1 Initiative, which promised an overall improvement in student achievement. By May of 2007, many schools in New York dropped the program because students had been using computers to cheat on tests, download pornography, and hack into businesses. In April of 2007, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement among students with or without computers.

There are no restrictions on laptops in most college classrooms. Students often use them for note taking. Some teachers encourage the use of computers among students in order to help them learn the technology they will need when they graduate. Journalism majors at Sacramento State are encouraged to take computer related classes because of the way news writing has continued to grow on the Internet.

Students use computers for more than just note taking though. Most students spend their time on myspace or craigslist. Instant messaging is quickly replacing those annoying, lecture-interrupting phone calls. The college student who is surfing the net instead of paying attention is the one who suffers. Why should teachers care whether students are paying attention? They are paying for their education; it is their choice what they do with it. The distractions come for those who actually are paying attention and are taking notes. It is very difficult to pay attention to a statistics lecture when the person sitting in front of you is looking at pictures of Britney Spears giving a beaver shot. Even the clickity-clack of typing on a keyboard can make it hard to listen to the professor.

One good thing about Internet access for students is that they are able to search for more information about a subject while a professor is talking. If an art teacher is discussing the importance of Stonehenge, a student can do a “google” search and discover more interesting facts about the manmade anomaly.


However, Internet use in the classroom has become such a distraction that some universities, like Bentley College, have set up on/off switches for individual classrooms so that teachers have the option of restricting Internet use.

The distance between younger digital savvy generations and older technologically challenged generations is too big right now to make any real advancement in classroom interactions. As these tech kids get older and start to saturate the workplace, they may find a way to incorporate education and computers, but for now, it seems that teachers and professors have not found that connection yet.