Every day I'm shufflin'

Even though trying to keep track of the nearly 64 hours of music that are stored in A Fistful of Soundtracks' "Assorted Fistful" playlist (plus the two hours of music that make up AFOS' "Rock Box" playlist) can occasionally be a hassle, running AFOS(*) is a pretty simple task. I just hit "Shuffle" and Live365.com does the rest.

(*) It's AFOS. No bloody FOS or FFOS. It's always been AFOS. I've always wanted to shorten it to just AFOS because the acronym AFOS can stand for many different phrases besides A Fistful of Soundtracks, and I once jotted down a list of 12 of them (examples: "Ample Focus on Scores" and my personal favorite, "Asians Fucking Owning Shit"). The current iTunes Radio description of "Fistful of Soundtracks" is nine years old (it's taken from a summary of AFOS that I typed into Live365.com when I first launched AFOS over there in 2002, back when Live365 wouldn't let radio stations have names longer than 22 letters for some stupid reason). iTunes has never bothered to replace the old description with a present-day one.

Sometimes, weird things I have no control over start to happen on AFOS when it's in shuffle mode.

Mel Gibson, who's so famously fond of Jews, gets followed by a Jew.

Yeah, I like "Eye of the Tiger" too, Live365, but I don't like it as much as you do apparently.

Same thing with the movie Wild Things...

... or the end credits music from Thor.

Two different incarnations of Batman getting streamed back-to-back always amuses me...

... as does Angel, Batman and Zorro getting streamed in the same hour. (Angel is like the Batman of the Whedonverse. Batman was modeled partly after Zorro. Also, in DC's pre-"New 52" continuity--I'm not sure if it's been changed in the current continuity--Bruce Wayne lost his parents to a mugger after they attended a Mark of Zorro screening. If it were a Legend of Zorro screening, all three Waynes would have lost the will to live and killed themselves afterward.)

Live365 occasionally does screwy things to the Bollywood-centric "Chai Noon" block. Das racist!

Shuffle mode sometimes results in nifty unintentional double shots or triple shots like:

Brian Tyler Fast and the Furious sequel theme double shots.

Pam Grier movie theme double shots.

Jim Kelly movie theme double shots.

Themes from movies about Bruce Lee movies getting streamed in the same hour.

Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek double shots.

Galaxy Quest/Star Trek double shots.

Trek/Galactica/Galaxy Quest triple shots.

J.J. Abrams/Michael Giacchino collabo triple shots.

Christopher Nolan/Hans Zimmer collabo double shots.

End credits music quadruple shots.

"Movies with Run in the title" double shots.

"Unexpectedly gory L.A. movies" double shots.

Live365 once caused a weird pattern in which a theme from a Spike Lee Joint ended up getting followed by a Cowboy Bebop track--twice in a row. I hope someone on Deviantart was listening to AFOS during that hour and thought about drawing a Spike Lee/Spike Spiegel mash-up someday. Make it happen, Internet!

Wilfred the Matt Damon-loving dog must have tried to sabotage Live365 during this hour.

The style guide for A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog

(Photo source: BACKYard Woods Explorer)

• Titles of songs, album tracks, short stories, TV series episodes, DVD or Blu-ray featurettes and cable channel or radio station programming blocks are always contained within quotation marks. Example from July 29, 2011: The "Rome, Italian Style" block on A Fistful of Soundtracks airs Mondays through Thursdays from 11am to noon. (However, even though Adult Swim is still technically a Cartoon Network programming block, the name isn't contained within quotes because Adult Swim evolved from a single-night block to a larger entity that Nielsen officially recognized as distinct from Cartoon Network in 2005, much like what happened to Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite.)

• Occupations or descriptive adjectives and nouns that appear before people's names are never capitalized. Example: constant self-recycler James Horner.

• Terms like "Filipino American," "Asian American" or "African American," which some writers prefer to hyphenate, are not hyphenated.

• The interpunct that used to be part of the Frito-Lay product name "Chee·tos" is absent whenever Cheetos is mentioned because of Frito-Lay's current official spelling, which removed the interpunct. Example: Why the hell does John Malkovich look like a human Cheeto during Transformers: Dark of the Moon?

• Numbers from one to nine are spelled out. Numbers above nine are written as figures (10, 11, 12, etc.) but are spelled out whenever they're the first words in sentences.

• The movie title Se7en and the procedural title Numb3rs maintain their unique spelling even though it looks stup1d.

• If a person is a Jr. or Sr., there is no comma between the name and Jr. or Sr. Example from January 13, 2009: Downey Jr. never drops character until the commentary is over.

• An ellipsis indicates a hammy pause. Example: "Dammit, Bones... this girdle you gave me for... my birthday... is too... constricting."

• Titles of movies, TV series, radio programs, podcasts, books, comic book series, magazines and newspapers are always italicized.

• Cardassians are whores for fascism. Kardashians are whores for attention.

(Photo source: Overthinking It)

• Names of online magazines like Salon and Slate are italicized. Names of blogs like DISGRASIAN, Burnt Lumpia and MovieMorlocks are not italicized.

• A Corolla is a car I damaged while driving it when I was a teen. A Carolla is a racist douchebag whose ass will get damaged by a gang of Pinoy teens if he ever sets foot in Daly City.

• Names of races and nationalities like African, Latino and Filipino are capitalized, but racial adjectives like "black," "white" and "brown" are not.

• "Sit for Baines" is a Back to the Future prequel fanfic about teenage George McFly's bumbling attempts to get to better know his crush Lorraine Baines by babysitting her younger brothers. "Shit for brains" is Fox News whenever it refers to Common as a gangsta rapper.

• Though this is an American blog and the word "license" is always spelled with just one "c," the British spelling of the 007 movie title Licence to Kill is left unchanged.

• "Michele Bachmann" is spelled with just one glassy "i."

Asians not playing violin

(Photo source: SFGate)

I recently gave a peek at some of the music I've been bumping while completing the artwork for my upcoming self-published book I Suck at Math: A Trio of 10 Articles About Pop Culture (and that post itself will be included in the book). It's time for another peek. Because it's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, here are five recordings from my laptop's various I Suck at Math artwork playlists that are all by Asian American musicians who don't play the Tiger Mom-enforced violin.

1. The Morning Benders, "Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)"
I first took notice of this terrific little timpani-driven cut about relationship disagreements during Sklarbro Country, of all shows. Good lookin' out, St. Louis Sklardinals. My only beef with "Cold War" is that it's way too short.



2. The Morning Benders, "Cold War (Star Slinger Remix)"
This dope remix Kanye-ifies Morning Benders frontman Christopher Chu's voice and is part of the Bay Area band's Japan Echo EP release to aid Japanese disaster relief.

The Morning Benders - Cold War (Star Slinger Remix) buy & support japan by Star Slinger

3. The CounterParts, Appetizer EP
It's cool to see T-Know's hip-hop career take off. I knew T-Know briefly when we were UCSC students.

4. The Skyflakes, "sci-fi as lit."
This is a pretty clever Star Trek-inspired song. The Fil-Am indie rock band's "sci-fi as lit." refers to events from the Next Generation episode "Tapestry," in which Q grants Picard his wish to go back in time and change a pivotal moment from his days as a vert-around-the-gills Starfleet Academy cadet. You don't have to be a Trekkie to dig "sci-fi as lit." because unlike the music of Trek-inspired novelty bands like No Kill I and Warp 11, the track never mentions any Trek characters by name, so it could refer to anyone who's ever wanted to redo a key moment in their past--something everyone can identify with.

5. Blue Scholars, "John DeLorean"
Another Pinoy musician expresses an obsession with time travel. This track, which contains Back to the Future references (hence the title "John DeLorean"), arose from a discussion Blue Scholars beatmaker Sabzi once had with Scholars MC Geo in which they wondered, "If you could have just one super power, what would it be?" Geo picked time travel because with that ability, "you actually have the capacity to secure any other super power you wanted. For example, if you wanted to fly, you could just travel to a future time where personal flying technology was developed and bring it back."

Has Geo ever considered writing sci-fi or superhero comics as a second career? What Geo said about powers in the "John DeLorean" single download's liner notes had 10 times more clarity and sense than the writing in last Friday's Smallville series finally.

Five rap jams where the rappers drop malapropistic pop culture references that make them sound like John Witherspoon when he referred to "Public Enema" during House Party

One of my favorite lines in the original House Party was John Witherspoon's Granddad from The Boondocks-esque neighbor character complaining about the title party blasting the music of "Public Enema." On a similar note, my favorite line in Zack and Miri Make a Porno is "Han Solo ain't never had no sex with Princess Leia in the Star War" because instead of Star Wars, Craig Robinson calls it "the Star War," as if the fictional conflict were the Civil War or the Vietnam War.

The "Public Enema" and "Star War" lines remind me of an article I read in a hip-hop magazine once. The article listed moments when rappers dropped malapropistic pop culture references or flubbed up celebrities' names. When they flub up the pop culture references like in the following five tracks, rappers suddenly sound old and out-of-it like that Witherspoon character from House Party (the Beastie Boys have been in the game for a while, but hopefully, they won't sound too out-of-it on their promising-sounding new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two).

Thanks to "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull, I'm in the mood for renting a film by "Albert Hitchcock."

1. "My Weezy" by Lil Wayne
Like Mojo Nixon during "Elvis Is Everywhere" and Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn, Wayne calls Star Trek's Vulcan hero "Dr. Spock" (a la baby care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock) instead of Mr. Spock.

2. "Oh Word?" by the Beastie Boys
"This is not a fantasy, I'm not Mr. O'Roarke." Wow, I didn't know the racially ambiguous but Latin-ish Mr. Roarke was really an Irish bloke all along.

3. "Shazam" by the Beastie Boys
Mike D misidentifies Fred Sanford's dead wife Elizabeth as "Weezy."

4. "Flip Flop Rock" by Big Boi featuring Killer Mike & Jay-Z
Big Boi refers to Penelope Cruz as "Penelope Ann Cruz," while Killer Mike admires the authority of "Commander Picard."

5. "Blindfold Me" by Kelis and her then-husband Nas
Nas probably meant "Mickey Rourke in 9 1/2 Weeks," but for some reason, it came out as "Gonna surprise you like Hugh Grant in 8 1/2 Weeks." Confusing the works of softcore porn producer Zalman King with the oeuvre of Chris Columbus, the family-friendly director of Nine Months, Home Alone and I Love You, Beth Cooper, is a common mistake in hip-hop. The other day on the street, I overheard a freestyle battle where one MC insulted the other to the beat of Drake's "Over" with "Got a text from your girl saying she wanna ride my penis/Like Hayden Panettiere in Delta of Venus."

Empire Records live-tweet recap (because today is Record Store Day)

(Photo source: Matt Ranzetta)

During the week Record Store Day 2010 took place, I live-tweeted Empire Records, which is set at a record store and seems to turn up on cable at least once every week. The movie is at its best when it pokes fun at washed-up soap stars/pop singers and sticks to being a relaxed comedy about working at a record store. At its worst, Empire Records is like a lousy and overdramatic Canadian teen soap that wouldn't look out of place on TeenNick.

Today is Record Store Day 2011, so I'm reposting my tweets about Empire Records.

(If you're not reading this on Record Store Day, this live-tweet recap can function as textual commentary that you can refer to while Empire Records is playing on TV. Sometimes, a certain movie I like will turn up on TV, and I want to see what someone else wrote about the movie, so I'll open an article or Wikipedia entry or IMDb trivia page about the movie that I had saved onto my laptop.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frigging Rex Manning Day. In a few minutes, I'm live-tweeting the #EmpireRecords: Remix! Special Fan Edition DVD, which came out in 2003.
12:05 PM

I'm a few minutes late. I'm on SuperStation TBS time.
12:06 PM

The Warner logo means the #EmpireRecords: Remix! Special Fan Edition live-tweet starts now. Why live-tweet a DVD that dropped 7 years ago?
12:09 PM

#EmpireRecords has things in it I like (particularly some of the songs and the fake Rex Manning music) and things I can't stand.
12:10 PM

The things I can't stand during #EmpireRecords (or as I like to call the film, Car Wash for alt-rockers) make it worthy of a live-tweet.
12:10 PM

When I started writing the webcomic The Palace, which is set at an indie theater, I told myself I must avoid the cliches of #EmpireRecords.
12:11 PM

The movie is an example of fun premise/sloppy execution (all that shit happens to the staffers in one day?).
12:11 PM

The movie flings dramatic crises at you with all the precision of a chimp flinging his poop at zoo-goers.
12:11 PM

This is the kind of movie where dunking a teen's head in the sink will make her diet pill addiction magically disappear.
12:13 PM

The midnight customer lady says, "Ugh, I couldn't look at Letterman's face for another second." Must be a fucking Leno fan.
12:13 PM

"Ugh, I couldn't look at Letterman's face for another second." I bet she masturbates over Leno's freakish-looking chin.
12:14 PM

Though he's much funnier than Leno, Letterman's no prize either. 11:35 network TV show hosting is for ugly rich people.
12:15 PM

I like the soundtracks of Allan Moyle's movies more than the movies themselves.
12:15 PM

"A Girl Like You" from the #EmpireRecords CD was my theme tune for when I tried to spit game at some hot UCSC neighbor chick in 1995.
12:15 PM

I'm the Edwyn Collins of skirtchasing. I'm a one-hit wonder.
12:16 PM

Rory Cochrane's Zen troublemaker Lucas is one of the few movie characters who can pull off a Spock haircut.
12:16 PM

As the opening credits roll, I have no idea which scenes Warner Bros. added to the theatrical cut in 2003.
12:16 PM

I think one of the added scenes is Lucas weeping for V'Ger as he would for a brother.
12:18 PM

Hey, it's Carey Mulligan. Woops, nope, my bad. It's a young Ethan Embry.
12:19 PM

Ethan Embry from Showtime's Brotherhood (back when he was known as Ethan Randall) plays Shaggy, uh, I mean, Mark.
12:20 PM

Showtime's Brotherhood. I think I bought an EP release by that band once.
12:20 PM

Showtime's Brotherhood sounds like some band that once opened for Jane's Addiction or... K's Choice or... Eve's Plum.
12:21 PM

Hard to believe that Mark and the cop in Brotherhood were played by the same guy.
12:21 PM

Liv Tyler's car scene is shot to look exactly like her Aerosmith video with Alicia Silverstone, in case we forget who Liv is.
12:22 PM

I like how Anthony LaPaglia doesn't give a shit about A.J.'s problems. It's Jack Malone: The Record Store Years.
12:23 PM

Jack Malone was an undercover Fed who posed as Joe, a Delaware record store owner, before he transferred to Missing Persons.
12:23 PM

Agent Malone's assignment was to investigate why Delaware record store employees keep dancing and never seem to do any work.
12:23 PM

A.J. shouts, "A little bit of focus would make me very happy!" That's also what I said about the 2nd half of this movie.
12:24 PM

The narrative in #EmpireRecords is often interrupted by overlong footage of what Dave Chappelle would call "white people dancin'."
12:25 PM

The writer of #EmpireRecords based it on a Tower Records she used to work at. I don't remember seeing the Tower clerks dance all the time.
12:25 PM

Not even the clerks at laid-back Streetlight Records here in the Bay Area are this peppy or fond of air-guitaring.
12:26 PM

High Fidelity's Championship Vinyl is what a real indie record store looks like. #EmpireRecords is a record store straight outta Disneyland.
12:28 PM

Where's the clerk who laughs at customers' music choices?
12:29 PM

Where are the clerks who yak at length about how bitter they still are about Glenn Danzig not being cast as Wolverine?
12:29 PM

Although Tower was the basis for #EmpireRecords, it's portrayed as the enemy and renamed Music Town. The facade is red/yellow like Tower's.
12:30 PM

Tower is also a villain in Treme. Its pilot has a funny subplot in which Steve Zahn fights Tower to get his band's CDs back.
12:30 PM

Maxwell Caulfield's character Rex Manning is like a white--and straight--Ricky Martin. Hey, they even got the same initials.
12:31 PM

In #EmpireRecords' alternate universe, "Say No More" is like "Livin' La Vida Loca" in 1999. You can't hide your ears from the motherfucker!
12:31 PM

Liv Tyler resembles Unhappily Ever After-era Nikki Cox during the scene when she's dancing to "Say No More."
12:32 PM

All that's missing is the audience of drunken sailors who were bused in to the studio to holla at Nikki Cox.
12:32 PM

Anthony LaPaglia says to Ethan Embry, "Mark, could you please not sing?" Mark, could you please try not to be funny?
12:36 PM

Mark is the stoner version of the Martian comic relief from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians who tries too hard to be wacky.
12:36 PM

Cochrane is the funniest actor in the movie. "Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear."
12:38 PM

It's as if Cochrane came from a different, wittier movie. He's like the basketball coach who's too witty to be in Teen Wolf.
12:38 PM

Lucas doesn't get fired for gambling away $9000 of #EmpireRecords' money. Good thing Joe doesn't fire Lucas. He's the only funny character.
12:39 PM

Aw yeah, "Romeo & Juliet" by Dire Straits. Because this is #EmpireRecords, we're given only 30 seconds to savor the tune.
12:39 PM

The ballet dancer customer who's getting checked out by Mark during the Dire Straits sequence looks like Maria McKee.
12:39 PM

The Maria McKee/Lone Justice track "Ways to Be Wicked" is a great forgotten driving-with-the-top-down song from the '80s.
12:40 PM

Lone Justice is also known for "Shelter." Let me be your shelter, shelter from the annoying Mark, Maria McKee lookalike.
12:40 PM

Lone Justice's "Ways to Be Wicked" has nothing to do with #EmpireRecords, but it's a cool fucking song: http://bit.ly/KbZP3
12:40 PM

The ballet dancer is played by Maxwell Caulfield's stepdaughter from his marriage to Juliet Mills.
12:41 PM

I want the Devo hat lampshade that's behind Lucas when Joe tells him he should have come to him for help.
12:43 PM

Robin Tunney, who plays Deb, cuts off her hair to the tune of "Free" by the Martinis. The #EmpireRecords song list: http://bit.ly/cneIj2
12:45 PM

The Martinis was co-founded by TV composer Joey Santiago, the Pinoy member of the Pixies. "Free": http://bit.ly/DWE6O
12:45 PM

The Pixies get mentioned in closing credits dialogue between Eddie the pizzaboy and Mark about bands they dig and hate.
12:45 PM

One day, Britney Spears saw Robin Tunney shave off her hair, and a Cheetos-stained lightbulb popped up over her head.
12:45 PM

Too bad Deb didn't lower that electric shaver and work on her armpits as well.
12:46 PM

One of the lamest moments in #EmpireRecords is Liv Tyler's boring floppy-haired love interest referring to Mr. Miyagi as Chinese.
12:47 PM

Miyagi is Japanese, you emo dipshit who told the barber, "Dude, make me look like a greasy, post-Eight Is Enough Adam Rich."
12:47 PM

Because of his line about Miyagi, I got a kick out of seeing Johnny Whitworth get bitchslapped and killed in 3:10 to Yuma.
12:48 PM

There are some pretty awful Gen-X hairdos in this flick (exhibit A: A.J.). Speaking of Gen-Xers: http://onion.com/9tDHch
12:48 PM

That Simpsons episode that flashed back to Homer and Marge as Gen-Xers must have turned to this movie for fashion ideas.
12:49 PM

See, kids, the thing that the pizzaboy handed to Mark is called a cassette. No, you can't plug it in to your MacBook, silly.
12:49 PM

"Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first music video MTV played. I'm looking forward to "Internet Killed the Video Star."
12:53 PM

"Internet Killed the Video Star" will then be followed by "Holobands Killed the Internet Star."
12:54 PM

Is Rex Manning a jab at Richard Marx? The fans who show up for Rex Manning Day were probably also into Richard Marx.
12:57 PM

I have no clue who Justin Bieber is, other than he's a trending topic and he has a Rex Manning-like future ahead of him.
12:57 PM

I can't name any of Bieber's songs. Whenever he performed on SNL last week, I would change the channel to Austin City Limits.
12:58 PM

I flicked to Austin City Limits and pretended Kings of Leon was Tina's musical guest. That's how interested I am in Bieber.
12:58 PM

Shh! It's my favorite scene. Renee Zellweger dances around in nothing but a Music Town apron and black panties.
12:59 PM

Dave Chappelle's Trading Spouses character said, "Who the hell is Renee Zell-weh-jer?" That the hell is Renee Zell-weh-jer.
12:59 PM

Or rather WAS Renee Zell-weh-jer. She isn't aging as gracefully as Liv Tyler is.
12:59 PM

I would love to see some chick turn the Renee Zellweger Music Town apron into a Halloween costume someday.
1:00 PM

Great understated bit of comic acting by Cochrane as he reacts to Gina in the apron and covers Warren the shoplifter's eyes.
1:00 PM

"Hey Rex, what happened to your hair?" Hey Debi Mazar, what happened to your hair?
1:00 PM

With the red pixie cut, Debi Mazar looks like she's auditioning to be the white member of the Mary Jane Girls.
1:02 PM

Debi Mazar plays a record label publicist who secretly hates Rex. Her publicist character on Entourage is far less timid.
1:03 PM

I want to see Mazar's Entourage character get into a filthy insult duel with Peter Capaldi's spin doctor from In the Loop.
1:04 PM

The #EmpireRecords cast includes 3 future stars of CBS procedurals: Without a Trace's Anthony LaPaglia, The Mentalist's Robin Tunney and...
1:05 PM

... Rory Cochrane. He went on to briefly co-star with David Caruso's sunglasses on CSI: Miami.
1:05 PM

I'm not sure what the amount of future CBS procedural actors in the cast says about #EmpireRecords. Maybe they were looking for a corpse...
1:06 PM

... without realizing that the corpse was #EmpireRecords itself. The movie sat on Warner Bros.' shelf and then died at the box office.
1:06 PM

I know, Without a Trace was a missing persons show, not a whodunit like Mentalist & CSI, but for the purposes of that joke...
1:07 PM

Ethan Embry was also a regular on a procedural, but this one aired on ABC: Ed O'Neill's surprisingly not-so-crappy Dragnet.
1:08 PM

I liked the O'Neill Dragnet more than the Dragnet everyone else grew up on because unlike Jack Webb, O'Neill can act.
1:08 PM

I liked how nobody on Dick Wolf's Dragnet read their lines off cue cards like on the Jack Webb version.
1:09 PM

Having O'Neill partner up with his Dutch co-star Embry was a nice touch. So was Mike Post's update of the Dragnet theme.
1:15 PM

The quality of O'Neill's Dragnet didn't last though. It became unwatchable when it changed its title to L.A. Dragnet.
1:15 PM

L.A. Dragnet? WTF, Dick Wolf? That's like if one day, he decided to change Law & Order's title to N.Y. Law & Order...
1:16 PM

... or if CBS decided to change the title of its new Hawaii Five-0 remake to Hawaiian Hawaii Five-0.
1:16 PM

A.J. weirds out Corey with "I love you." Michael Showalter's lovesick Wet Hot American Summer character was a parody of A.J.
1:22 PM

Any scene between Johnny Whitworth's A.J. and Liv Tyler's Corey is always a good time for me to go clean out my e-mail.
1:22 PM

Caring about the romance in #EmpireRecords is like watching Caddyshack just to see if Michael O'Keefe will win over the chick from Ireland.
1:23 PM

#EmpireRecords director Allan Moyle also made Pump Up the Volume, which features an odd appearance by a Wonder Years babe-turned-porn star.
1:24 PM

The most interesting thing about Pump Up the Volume is that the pregnant teen was played by future Tiger Woods penis cozy Holly Sampson.
1:24 PM

My 2 favorite tracks from the #EmpireRecords album--"A Girl Like You" and the Cranberries' "Liar"--are back-to-back in the movie.
1:28 PM

Edwyn Collins shot two "A Girl Like You" videos. They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh directed one of them: http://bit.ly/aZk7wV
1:29 PM

The full version of the great fake pop song "Say No More": http://bit.ly/wuh6Z. "Say No More" wasn't included on the #EmpireRecords album.
1:30 PM

Soundtrack albums that don't contain many of the songs I liked hearing in the movie are annoying (#EmpireRecords, GoodFellas).
1:32 PM

"Say No More" is a dead-on parody of washed-up soap actors-turned-pop singers, right down to Rex's puffy shirt.
1:32 PM

#EmpireRecords must've been temp-tracked with Beastie Boys joints. Rex Manning gets thrown out to the tune of a "Johnny Ryall" soundalike.
1:33 PM

#EmpireRecords is one caffeine pill away from turning into a very special Saved by the Bell.
1:34 PM

Aw Christ, the Renee Zellweger/Liv Tyler screaming match is more OTT than Elizabeth Berkley's "I'm So Excited" meltdown.
1:34 PM

If Liv Tyler performed her screaming match with Zellweger in Elvish, the Elvish still wouldn't save the scene from sucking.
1:35 PM

#EmpireRecords is an incredibly bipolar movie. Many of its characters act like it too.
1:35 PM

Amazon.com's #EmpireRecords review is spot-on: the film "screeches with the sound of teenagers falling apart emotionally every 5 minutes."
1:35 PM

From Google Health's page on bipolar disorder: "Periods of excitability (mania) alternating with periods of depression"?
1:36 PM

"The 'mood swings' between mania and depression can be very abrupt"? Yep, that describes #EmpireRecords to a tee.
1:36 PM

Perhaps bipolar isn't even the right word to describe #EmpireRecords' constant changes in tone. It's more like quintupolar.
1:38 PM

By the way, what the hell is up with that expression "describes it to a tee"? That expression makes no sense.
1:38 PM

Robin Tunney's delivery of "Oh Rexy, stop that! You're so sexy!" is amusing. Funniest bald chick since Shorty Robe Ilia.
1:39 PM

"You are the Kirk Unit." How does an actress say that with a straight face?
1:40 PM

The no-longer-bald stand-up comic Rene Hicks was a pretty funny bald lady too.
1:41 PM

Tracy Morgan does a dead-on Chewbacca. He also recently did a hilarious impression of Dr. Zaius on Letterman.
1:41 PM

I don't know if Tracy Morgan's ever seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but...
1:41 PM

... I'd like to see Tracy Morgan add the Ilia probe to his repertoire of '60s/'70s sci-fi character impressions.
1:43 PM

Mark wolfs down Eddie's pot brownies and laughs it up as he imagines himself jamming on TV with GWAR.
1:43 PM

Pot brownies can help make unfunny things funnier, like this GWAR/brownies sequence. Or According to Jim. Or Mind of Mencia.
1:44 PM

Or Glenn Beck comedy tours. On second thought, maybe not even pot brownies could help make them entertaining.
1:44 PM

Eddie the Henry Rollins-hating pizzaboy is one of the few #EmpireRecords characters who's not recycled from an '80s teen flick.
1:45 PM

Most of the #EmpireRecords characters don't discuss their musical tastes, so it's a relief to hear Eddie drop knowledge about Eric Clapton.
1:46 PM

Eddie, who's played by James "Kimo" Wills, actually sounds like someone I'd find working in an indie record store.
1:46 PM

There's a funny @The_AV_Club article about movie and TV characters with unconvincing musical tastes: http://bit.ly/aZi4KO
1:46 PM

One good thing about #EmpireRecords is that it doesn't have Eddie express some out-of-nowhere love for Hootie & the Blowfish or something.
1:46 PM

#EmpireRecords was originally written to take place over 2 days, but they got squished into one. No wonder this movie makes little sense.
1:47 PM

#EmpireRecords is like the chick in the Elvis Costello song "Episode of Blonde." It has the attention span of warm cellophane.
1:47 PM

As #EmpireRecords squeezes in dramatic crisis after dramatic crisis, I feel like Mel Brooks at the start of High Anxiety.
1:47 PM

Instead of "What a dramatic airport!," it's "What a dramatic independent record store!"
1:48 PM

An #EmpireRecords dramatic scene that's actually not terrible is Deb at her "funeral," quietly deciding not to try to kill herself anymore.
1:49 PM

The mock funeral is clearly a shout-out to Robert Altman's M*A*S*H.
1:51 PM

Speaking of Altman, Liv Tyler went on to give what's perhaps her best performance so far in Cookie's Fortune.
1:52 PM

The fake funeral in the middle of the day makes no sense. I thought Rex Manning Day's supposed to the busiest day of the yr.
1:52 PM

Despite making no sense, Deb's fake funeral is genuinely amusing. Deb gets annoyed by how self-absorbed her "mourners" are.
1:53 PM

Tyra from Friday Night Lights has a lot in common with Gina. Both are trampy blondes who don't want to turn into their moms.
1:54 PM

WARNING: Warren the shoplifter's Johnny Rotten-like screechy voice may frighten canine viewers.
1:55 PM

On the couch, Renee Zellweger is sitting on Liv Tyler's lap. Is this heading towards a lingerie pillow fight? I hope so.
1:56 PM

This movie would be shorter if the townspeople used Twitter to spread the word about the store-saving midnight concert.
2:02 PM

#EmpireRecords was my 1st exposure to Renee Zellweger. When Jerry Maguire dropped, I was like, "It's the apron chick from #EmpireRecords."
2:03 PM

I've actually never seen Jerry Maguire, even though I bought a widescreen VHS of Jerry Maguire 11 years ago.
2:04 PM

VHS was where #EmpireRecords found its cult after a theatrical run that shouldn't even be called a release. It was more like a silent fart.
2:06 PM

Hal Sparks-ish Evil Corporate Exec from Music Town says one of the movie's best lines: "Doesn't anybody work in this store?"
2:06 PM

Zellweger's performance of "Sugar High" on the rooftop is another highlight of #EmpireRecords. No lip-synching-to-Marni Nixon shit here.
2:07 PM

Coyote Shivers is best known for "Sugar High" and getting slapped with restraining orders by his ex--Abby from NCIS.
2:07 PM

Coyote Shivers' douchey treatment of Pauley Perrette is diminishing my enjoyment of "Sugar High."
2:08 PM

Abusing and stalking Abby from NCIS is like clubbing a baby seal. A Gothy, studded dog collar-wearing baby seal.
2:08 PM

Wow. @smush21 of @GraceNMichelle recreates Renee Zellweger's outfit and sings "Sugar High": http://bit.ly/9utUo0
2:09 PM

Tobey Maguire, who's listed in the credits but was deleted from #EmpireRecords' theatrical cut, isn't found in this 2003 "Remix" either.
2:13 PM

This 2003 version of #EmpireRecords is 17 minutes longer than the 1995 version, yet they weren't able to squeeze in Spider-Man?
2:13 PM

Maybe Maguire had a crying scene that's as awful as his Spider-Man 3 crying scenes. Maybe that's why he remains deleted from #EmpireRecords.
2:14 PM

The Tobey Maguire footage that we all want to see isn't even included in the DVD's deleted scenes.
2:14 PM

The deleted scenes contain more of Maxwell Caulfield as Rex and establish that he once was like the Coyote Shivers character.
2:14 PM

In the deleted footage, Rex redeems himself and gets his street cred back by jamming with Coyote Shivers.
2:15 PM

I'll now describe Rex's regained street cred in rap history terms without sounding like a dumbass like Michael Steele.
2:15 PM

Rex is LL Cool J, and his deleted midnight concert scene is his Mama Said Knock You Out moment after losing his street cred.
2:16 PM

The Gin Blossoms' "Til I Hear It from You" was co-written by Marshall Crenshaw? I did not know that. That's weird wild stuff.
2:16 PM

For some reason, I thought Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne co-wrote "Til I Hear It from You."
2:17 PM

"Til I Hear It from You" is a pop song I'm kind of ashamed to admit I like.
2:17 PM

My text commentary continues for a few minutes after the credits ended. I guess this is like the Fast Times DVD commentrak.
2:18 PM

It looks like #EmpireRecords director Allan Moyle was trying to make a freewheeling Altman flick for Gen-Xers...
2:19 PM

... but the different sections (ooh, it's an Afterschool Special about drugs... ooh, now it's on suicide) don't gel together.
2:19 PM

There's a much better Altman-esque flick for Gen-Xers that also starred Rory Cochrane. It's called Dazed and Confused.
2:20 PM

Even though Dazed and Confused is set in the '70s, it's very much a Gen-Xer film.
2:20 PM

The dramatic conflicts in Dazed and Confused feel much less forced. I almost forgot that Renee Zellweger is also in D&C.
2:21 PM

As a shout-out to Cochrane and Zellweger's earlier film, a store register had a Dazed and Confused bumper sticker on it.
2:22 PM

The register with the Dazed and Confused sticker was behind Warren the shoplifter while he waved his gun around.
2:22 PM

Rent Dazed and Confused instead of #EmpireRecords if you haven't seen either film. The drinking games you can play during D&C are the shit.
2:23 PM

After the "Drink when Wiley Wiggins touches his nose" game during Dazed and Confused, you'll be dead from alcohol poisoning.
2:25 PM

End of #EmpireRecords live-tweet. Damn the man. Drop by afistfulofsoundtracks.blogspot.com for the live-tweet recap.
2:26 PM

(Empire Records photo sources: Fanpop, SEMI)

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Roxy Music, "Same Old Scene"

Song: "Same Old Scene" by Roxy Music
Released: 1980
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's mainly due to its appearance at the end of the first episode of the impressively soundtracked British cop show Ashes to Ashes, a sequel to the original version of Life on Mars that ran on BBC One from 2008 to 2010 and like the original, left a present-day British cop stranded in the past (this time, it was Keeley Hawes' Alex Drake, trapped in both 1981 and huge Dynasty shoulder pads).

From an Ashes to Ashes first-season soundtrack album customer review at the British version of Amazon.com, which notes that "Same Old Scene" isn't on the album:

But most mystifyingly, the one track which for me was as much the theme of the series as Bowie's 'Ashes To Ashes' itself - Roxy Music's 'Same Old Scene' - is also not included. This track was used in the ultra-cool sequence at the end of episode one which contained virtually no dialogue. The piece of music that the show's producers were originally going to use for this was 'Imagine' by John Lennon; considering how much the mood of the sequence would have been altered if they had gone ahead, it becomes clear how essential this Roxy Music song actually was in setting up the dark, brooding, sexually charged atmosphere so successfully evoked.

BBC America has yet to air Ashes to Ashes' third and final season, which I haven't seen yet, so unless I click to Wikipedia to read the spoilers, I have no way of knowing if Ashes to Ashes ended in a brilliant, David Bowie-scored way like the original Life on Mars did or in a batshit-crazy, completely random, "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet"-style way like the American Life on Mars did. Apparently, decades-old reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation are a bigger priority to BBC America (last time I checked, that show's not British).



All the other "Rock Box" Tracks of the Day from this week:
The Dubliners, "The Rocky Road to Dublin"
Pixies, "Where Is My Mind?"
The Skyflakes, "Talk About Today"
The Jackson 5, "Never Can Say Goodbye"

Who's That Voice on A Fistful of Soundtracks? #2: Percy Rodrigues

Percy Rodrigues
Who is he?: As an announcer, this African Canadian actor and Peyton Place cast member was best known for scaring millions of white people away from the water during the Jaws trailers and ads (he's one of the interviewees in The Shark Is Still Working, a 2006 documentary about the making of Jaws that also marks the actor's final public appearance before his death). But because the release of the original Jaws was before my time, I know Rodrigues best from the She's Having a Baby trailer ("I stopped taking the pill") and the Alien³ trailer, where he declared that "the bitch is back." I like how he could sound ominous one moment and then be tongue-in-cheek seconds later--or be both at the same time, like in the She's Having a Baby and Alien³ previews.
Most memorable on-screen role: On the original Star Trek, Rodrigues guest-starred as a Starfleet commodore whose voice must have frightened Dr. McCoy away from the Enterprise swimming pool.
When can you hear him on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel?: The trailers for Taxi Driver, Lifeforce and The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition.



Previous "Who's That Voice?" bio:
Adolph Caesar

Around the world in 520 words

I don't keep track of the size of the Fistful of Soundtracks channel's international audience, but I know I get a lot of listeners from Europe. Some of them have mentioned AFOS in their tweets or newspaper pieces. A writer from England's Observer paper described my station's format as "tunes from films and TV, surprisingly listenable," while a British listener told me earlier this year he heard BBC Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox give AFOS a shout-out on the air.

Over in the Netherlands, someone plugged AFOS in a Facebook post.

In Dutch, the post says: "Jimmy Aquino draait al sinds 2002 Film- en TV muziek op zijn eigen radiostation, altijd in themas. Omdat het voornamelijk een one-man-show is, worden de programma's slechts wekelijks geupdate. Naast de wekelijkse show wordt het station gevuld door een jukebox vol trailers en de bijbehorende muziek. Aquino weet niet alleen ongelofelijk veel van filmmuziek, hij tekend ook strips en schrijft korte verhalen."


Google Translate's slightly malapropistic version in English says: "Jimmy Aquino has been around since 2002 Film and TV music on his own radio station, always themes. Because it is mainly a one-man show, then the program is only updated weekly. Besides the weekly show, the station filled by a jukebox full of trailers and the accompanying music. Aquinas not only knows an incredible amount of film music, he also signed comics and writes short stories."

I appreciate the praise, but like most blog posts that mention AFOS, it's not 100 percent correct about the details ("Because it is mainly a one-man show, the program is only updated weekly"). The Dutch listener is right about the Fistful of Soundtracks channel's one-man staff but somewhat incorrect about the weekly updating of episodes of the one-hour program that originated on college radio (which was also called A Fistful of Soundtracks). I do update the Wednesday reruns of that program each week, but I haven't recorded a new ep since "Dance Into the Fire" in 2008 because I've been underemployed for a while, and it's become too expensive for me to continue producing the program or to pay Bruce the announcer again to re-record the program intro in the reruns and introduce me as "Jimmy J. Aquino" instead of the now-outdated "Jimmy Aquino."

However, I haven't stopped updating the Fistful of Soundtracks channel's daytime playlists. A couple of weeks ago, I added to the "Chai Noon" playlist some Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge numbers from a new Shahrukh Khan soundtrack compilation and some tracks from the new Abhishek Bachchan/Aishwarya Rai movie Raavan, and then I added the Beastie Boys instrumental "Shambala" to the "F Zone" playlist after the Breaking Bad season finale devoted an entire sequence to "Shambala." This week's additions to "Assorted Fistful" are selections from Varèse Sarabande's expanded version of Michael Giacchino's Star Trek score album.

The above Dutch phrase "hij tekend ook strips" means "he has also drawn comics." Google Translate thinks the post says "he also signed comics." Yeah, I don't write comics. I just autograph them. The "Sampler" script and The Palace were actually the work of South Korean laborers.