Forgotten DVDs: ¡Oye Esteban!

I am what you would call a "casual" Morrissey fan, if there is such a thing. Usually his music/persona is met with either violent outrage or extreme super-fandom. I'm somewhere in the middle. And only really familiar with his work in the 90's. I've seen him in concert a few times but don't know anything about his later albums such as Age of Quarry or Ringleader of the Toreadors. But there is something about this kindly English gentleman and his music that united everyone from new wavers to hardcore punks to even metalheads. (OK, maybe not the metalheads so much)

Last week, a friend posted a cryptic Facebook message with a Mozzer lyric, which inspired me to bust out the old DVD ¡Oye Esteban! which is a collection of 19 of his music videos. I had not so much as listened or viewed this DVD since the year 2001. AND good God, some of these videos have to be well over 20 years old. Time flies!

The first thing I've noticed is that music videos from the 80's and 90's don't move as fast as their 21st century counterparts. Less shots, less quick cuts, less pomp and circumstance. Nowadays with cheaper production crews and better editing equipment, you can cram way more sh*t into a five pound sack. Plus kids today have a very short attention span, so it's cut, cut, cut, cut. Things move along in a more relaxed pace in these here vids.

So the weekend is almost here and I know a lot of you are ready to party. On that note, here's a few thoughts on select videos from this forgotten DVD. I have a limited window and don't have the time to review everything. I can only let my kid watch the Fresh Beat Band for so long…..

Let's talk about the DVD itself.

First off, about the lamest authoring. Just a scan of the cover and the videos start playing. No extras, no cool menu. And I'll be damned if I can find any supplementals or Easter Eggs. Oh, these videos are classic 720X480. No widescreen 16X9. Hello pillarbox. The dancing Warner Reprise logo is vintage 80's though.

Everyday is Like Sunday: CRUELTY WITHOUT BEAUTY Ha ha, the vegetarian girl is terrorizing old ladies wearing fur coats. Oh look, she has those vintage yellow Sony Walkman headphones! Then her mom picks her up and takes her home. I love European dashboards. Nice, they have carpeting in their kitchen. Name of show on the telly?

Suedehead: The stuff that 120 Minutes dreams are made of.

Last of the Famous International Playboys: OK, this slipped by me the first time I saw this: Moz and the band are on some kind of green screen set. But they ain't keyed out. Did the producers and editors decide it wasn't worth the work? It would have been a bitch for the editor to key this with all the handheld shots and zooms. Plus all the wrinkles in the screen….absolutely maddening.

My Love Life: The boys go to Vegas and drive around in a Rolls Royce. Classically great.

Sing Your Life: I've never seen so many cuts from the lead singer to…the lead singer. The hair was at an all-time high.

Seasick, Yet Still Docked: Production values & stylization started picking up around Your Arsenal. Great lighting, depressing vintage home movies. Good.

We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful: Good video with a few odd editing choices. The steadicam work would get better in videos to come. It's a little wonky here.

Glamourous Glue: Not much to say about the visuals. I would like to backtrack and say what a great career move it was when Morrissey picked up this backing band and "heavied" up his sound. Not that I don't like the earlier hits, but damn, these guys are good.

Tomorrow: Great steadicam one-shot video. I always loved this. Would today's youth possibly have the attention span to sit through it? Sweet Jesus! An IMDB search tells me that Zack "300" Snyder directed. Could this music video possibly be more different than his seizure-enducing film work?

The More You Ignore Me the Closer I Get: More excellent lighting. If anyone can find me a room with those lights suspended from the ceiling I would be appreciative. I want to rip this look off for a video of my own!

Dagenham Dave: The mere shot of a classic English pub has me fancying a pint. Unfortunately due to old age, failing health and the onset of children, I can only drink about one beer before getting a hangover. Ugh, getting old sucks. Back to the video, I love it when Moz ruins their game of snooker!

The Boy Racer: One of my favorites of all time. We begin with stylized, strobed shots of some amazing instruments and amps. WTF, is this an AC-DC video??? OK, no, there's the Mozzer. Great lighting, great performance shots, slightly marred by a stupid subplot. Wait, what did that guy just put in his car stereo? Oh, it was a cassette. OK, it is funny when Morrissey gets pulled over. Play this one at loud volumes.

OK, that's it. Moz fans. Leave your kind thoughts in the comments section. Grazie!

My Paranoia Continues!

I'm more confused than my father-in-law at a TV on the Radio concert about the latest development with this blog.

As you recall from my last post, my AdSense privileges were revoked because I allegedly abused the system. You can read all about that here.

Which leads me to today's discovery. If you go into "Stats" on the tabs bar or whatever you call it, you can see which posts people are reading. The stats show absolutely NO activity on the post where I talked about my experience with Google, Blogger and AdSense. Now I know from talking to people in real life, they've read the article. So whycome Blogger won't acknowledge that people are viewing this specific post?

BTW, these numbers are an absolute toilet dump. I need to boost the ratings. If this blog was a TV show, it would be Outsourced. Well at least someone is interested in all those Boardlords videos I shot.

So back to topic, what is going on here? The post appears to be nonexistent. I'm starting to fear I will be too if I keep poking fun at the Google empire. (even if it is in a comical, lighthearted manner!)

So if they come and take me in the middle of the night, I'm putting Bunny in charge. Tell the world my story.

On a totally unrelated note, I see that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Marion Cotillard have joined the cast of the 'The Dark Knight Rises', directed by Christopher Nolan.

Holy cronyism, Batman!

What, let me guess, is the Caped Crusader going to go into a dream world….within a dream world???? Zzzzzzzzz…….

I guess while I'm waiting I can tide myself over by going to see Thor. Or this one:

Excuse me, what in Heaven's name is going on with this new X-Men movie they're hyping up? All I know is that January Jones (that miserable, but very hot housewife from Mad Men) will be in it, and she looks like a 70's porn star. For that, I might watch.

I'm reading about fake movie posters, fake trailers….Now that every 13 year old kid with a computer is up to online nonsense, I don't know what is real or what to believe anymore.

AdSense? I Call It Nonsense!

I'm madder than a Filipino immigrant at a cancelled Far East Movement concert. Get this: Google disabled my AdSense account. Take a look at my site, you may notice a cleaner, more streamlined look. (The writing remains clunky) What's missing? The blipping, blinking flash-driven messages, trying to separate you from your hard-earned dollars. In their place is a big 'ol piece of negative space.

On Wednesday afternoon I received an email from Google AdSense. They claim my blog "poses a risk of generating invalid activity". So I guess running advertisements on my site was a roller coaster ride that lasted all of about a week. I'd like to say it was fun while it lasted, but dammit, I never so much as got a payout!

Now in their rules and regulations, they strictly forbid users from clicking on their own advertisements. Not a problem. Never did that. But they also say you can't hype your site and encourage your viewers to click. Uh oh.

But wait….who's to say what's a valid click or not? Wasn't Kat thinking about booking a flight or four on Icelandic Air? Perhaps Bunny forgot he already had a Netflix membership and accidentally opened that link 20 or 30 times. Skow is a big stock footage buff. Can you blame him for repeatedly looking at the Pond 5 website? I can't keep track of all my viewer's comings and goings, can I?

WTF happened to the true spirit of advertising? Why would we be putting these ads on our sites if the goal was NOT to have people look at them? "Enjoy my article, but ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room, AKA that blinking Pizza Hut ad. That's right, do anything but support my sponsors." At this time I would like to thank all my friends/fans for hitting this site so hard over the last week. Although, maybe you hit it a little too hard.

I almost forgot, they give you the option to "appeal" the revocation. You fill out a quick form. After about 3 or 4 minutes I got a reply that amounted to, "Nice try, asshole." Please.

I'm calling horsesh*t on Google AdSense and if they want to shut this blog down, fine by me. I was only interested in posting here again with the promise of easy money. Damn, I had allegedly "made" about $140 in one week's time. Multiply that over a month's worth of posts, not a bad way to make some money on the side. Too good to be true, and you know these guys didn't want to pay me out.

BTW, How did they determine clicks are fraudulent? The fact that this is Google, I wouldn't be surprised if they have their spies all up in in everybody's business. Rooting through email, Facebook, texts and so on. My conspiranoia runs deep…..

"Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers." Oh really? You mean you're paying yourself back? That's mighty white of you.

I'll always cherish the memories of checking the "monetize" tab on a daily basis. When I saw those dollar amounts accruing, I was as giddy as the two guys in the movie Middle Men who created billable adult entertainment.

If you are running a site on Blogger, heed my advice: They will revoke your AdSense account just as quickly as they set it up. Don't click on your own ads, don't encourage your readers to click on the ads. There will be no friendly warning, they will just shut you down ASAP. This is a Catch 22: If you don't hype the site, you won't get paid. But if you DO hype the site, you won't get paid.

Some Euros Ruined My Record Auction! Part Two

Alright, picking up where we left off yesterday: Let's get into the financials. As you recall, I said that I bundled up the albums into groups of 6 and 9. I think I had 13 or 14 auctions going, give or take. A few were a bust. In the chart below, you can see my winnings for the week of April 3rd.



So, not terrible. I mean, I was really happy with the results. Here's where the problems start, hence the title of this post/article.

My counsel suggested it.

I agreed with it.

US buyers only.

In general, I love my European brothers and sisters. They have fantastic taste in music, hence their infatuation with all things American Hardcore. But it's those mother-fing shipping and customs forms that queers the whole deal. Have you ever filled out a shipping form to Germany? I'd rather be back in school writing an essay! It's absolutely miserable.

So on one of my typical listings, I would have it laid out, US bidders only:



But that certainly didn't stop European bidders from asking me questions about how much to ship. And then the auctions started ending. And the offenders started rolling in: Germany. Canada. Peru. Oh God. Have you ever seen a Peruvian address? It looks like a chalkboard in that movie, A Beautiful Mind. Anything with this in the address: (Por altura de la 16 de la Av. Velasco Astete) spells trouble in my book when you have to transcribe it to a tiny customs form. In the US it's easy: 12 Main Street. Done.

It was recently brought to my attention that if someone is, say….German, they should not have an Amercian eBay account, rather they should be going to ebay.de So essentially, they are jumping through hoops and breaking the rules to establish an American account. A lot of work to be a pain in the ass to us American sellers. And something you won't realize until they win your stuff.

Back to my auction: Now, I am *reasonably* a nice guy. I was only charging 4 dollars to ship out lots of 6 or 9 records AND offering a reduced rate on multiple wins. Despite inflation running rampant in the United States, you can still ship things fairly cheap. But Christ almighty, you should have seen the rates to ship international. To ship a small box of records to Canada (or as I call them, the Euros to our north) was over $30! Are you kidding me?? This wasn't a bag of golf clubs, it's 9 lousy records in a small box. So I got hosed on that one.

I believe I promised you a pie graph. Now, my math is absolutely terrible. I'm sure this isn't dead-perfect, but it gives you an idea of the the distribution of funds. (not to mention the corporate swindling) Let's break down the numbers.



Yes, thanks to a Canadian and German bidder, I had to tack on over $60 to the shipping fees. And fill out painfully long customs forms. My problem was that I only made up slightly inflated shipping charges when I sent them the invoice. "Oh, just add $9 instead of $4." When in fact, it was a hell of a lot more. My fault entirely.

Actually on that note, here is a much more accurate pie graph of the process on a whole:



So it was a lot of time & work for about 500 bucks. And I don't really feel like I purged our house of anything substantial. If you are in the boat that I was in, take this as a lesson. You want to ship to Europe, fine…they do pay top dollar for records. Just find out up front what postage is going to cost and make sure you pass the buck to them. On second thought, I just would ship within the continental US.
Or put the records here. -->

Some Euros Ruined My Record Auction! Part One

eBay: What was once a sure-fire way to drum up some extra cash has become a deluge of fees, new rules and general aggravation. Compounding the problem is the fact that eBay is in cahoots with Paypal, thus giving them the rights to double-dip on your winnings. Greedy, scum-sucking bastards.

Now this article is geared towards a very specific demographic, and by that I mean there are probably only several hundred people that this will be relevant to. (wow, way to alienate your audience in the second paragraph, Scott) But you can continue reading it if you want, especially if you like the promise of pie charts. And Euro bashing.

But before we go any further, we need a backstory.

I'm writing this for the benefit of men like myself: Americans who were avid fans of hardcore/punk music in the 1980's and somehow managed to save the records they collected at shows and trips to various record stores. You are in your late thirties to mid forties. You are probably married. You may have children. You most likely played in a band. You are what snarky little internet kids would call an "asshole". This post is not geared toward the uber-serious fanboy record collectors with online trade lists who take their game seriously. But if that's you, you are more than welcome to keep reading and go, "What an asshole".

I mulled around with the idea of selling off my vinyl collection several months ago. Specifically, December. Heeding the advice of my consul, I held off on the auction until after the holiday madness. Hold on, why selling? The long and the short of it is that I have no real use for a record collection of any size. My turntable is long gone and iTunes has replaced the once-popular hi-fi stereo system that occupied my living room. If I want to listen to Youth of Today's "We're Not In This Alone", I've got it in mp3 form. I have close to everything I love listening to from my youth on a Western Digital external drive. Including YOT's longtime nemesis: Half Off. And why bother putting a record on a turntable when I could much easier get into this with a few clicks of the mouse?

So I turned to a good friend and former hardcore frontman for some guidance. He said, "My advice? Just consign the records to Malcolm at Trash American Style." (you know who Malcolm is, right? Because I don't have time to get into that) My friend said I should save myself the headache of dealing with:

1. A bunch of stupid hardcore kids and adult-kids who will be bidding on the records...

2. And asking incessant questions about pressings, wax colors and matrixes

3. And who will be whining "where's my stuff?"

4. And will potentially leave me negative feedback over minute details

5. And shipping them out a pain in the ass (Oh, more on that coming up)

Now those all valid points. BUT, I sold a ton of 7" records to Trash American Style in the late eighties. 100% my decision, and a dumb one at that. I didn't get the money the records were worth (didn't care at the time) and I was to be damned if I was going to make that mistake again in 2011. No, I was going to sell these discs myself and try and reap as much profit as possible.

Now, no slight to Malcolm. He is a great guy and has alway run a fantastic business. But guess what? I like MAKING MONEY as well.

How about Craigslist? No f-ing way. Over my wife's dead body is some weirdo dropping by the old homestead to peruse my vinyl collection. Oh and at this point, let me establish that the records I had were for the most part, nothing great. About a milk crate's worth of stuff from New York, DC and the like. A few Cro-Mags albums, Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Beyond, Rorschach, Dag Nasty. 7" from Warzone, Slipknot, Metallica, Rollins and Collapse. Not the rarest offerings, but musically, they kick mucho ass.

My first move was to test the waters with a few CD sales. Yes, if you didn't know already, the right compact discs are worth money. For example, I sold Leeway's 2nd album for like 30 bucks and I hear it can fetch up to $50. I also had good luck with the Into Another unreleased LP.

So one fine Sunday morning, I motivated myself to start snapping pictures of records and drawing up item descriptions on eBay. And I was f**ked if I was going to list & ship each record individually. No, for the most part, I put the records into groups of six and nine.

Oh look at that, we ran out of time. In Part Two I'll tell you how much money I made and if the whole damn thing was worth it or not. And of course, we'll get to the bottom of why this article is titled: Some Euros Ruined My Record Auction!

Today's post is brought to you by McGuinness Brand Ipecac. "If your roomate is keeping you from getting nookie, put a little McGuinness on his cookies".

Hot In Tehran

WTF is going on here? I was just taking a look at some of the visitor stats. First off, let me back up a step. A lot has changed in the Blogger world since I stopped posting here in 2008. There are all kinds of crazy charts and graphs and statistics available. For example, I know what kind of operating systems and browsers you are viewing me on. 3 people checked out the site on an iPad? Holy crap, we've hit the bigtime! Perhaps if it was some super-cool hipster reading about my Facebook Sh*tlist in a trendy NYC coffee shop. Wow, isn't technology cool? And borderline invasive? See the pie chart below:



OK, so back to my original topic: Visitor stats and pageviews by country…..USA: 179. That sounds about right. Next down on the list IRAN???? 14 views? Do they even HAVE the internet in Iran? (They do have the internet, right?)




Who the hell is reading this site from Iran? Any why? I feel like I'm a pawn in some Middle Eastern plot to take over the good 'ol USA. "We can't get Facebook accounts ourselves, so we will analyze this jerk's random observations about Facebook. And look into his movie reviews as well, he may be on to something." BTW, that guy over there on the right is scaring the crap out of me now just as much as he did when I saw him on the Channel 5 10 O'Clock News back in the late 70's.

Iranian blog visitors, I say identify yourselves now! At the very least, click on some of our fine sponsors like On Demand or Chase Blueprint.

Uh oh, I have a theory: Maybe the traffic is coming from some dopey American tourists who were caught hiking and are now imprisoned by Iranian officials. Perhaps they are checking out the site via a hidden blackberry for a much-needed laugh before the inevitable. If this is the case, we want to help you. Send us a code: Type "Bulstrode & Skarloey" in the comments section. I'll make sure an elite crack commando team is deployed to spring you out of captivity. Yes, we're sending Mr. T.

Slightly related question: Where in the hell is New Caledonia?

One last thing: Tax time is here. If you've done your returns, cash your check, go to Baskin Robbins and buy as much Tax Crunch ice cream as you can. This is not a joke, this has to be the best ice cream I've ever eaten. And the girl behind the counter will not tell you otherwise.

Today's post is sponsored by McGuiness Brand Artificial Dog Testicles. When it comes to fake dog testes, McGuiness makes the bestees.

Top 10 Most Vapid Facebook Posts

I'm so bummed. I was pretty much off Facebook. Then I got a Droid smartphone and somehow I got sucked back in to this miserable time waster. Now granted, a lot of you creative folks post interesting things: Artwork, videos, photos, photos of models (thank you) And as for you jokesters, I find some of your observations from the grocery store, workplace and funeral home hilarious.

But outweighing the good content is a copious amount of "I'm compelled to post something even though it really isn't compelling" posts. In the words of a young Debora Van Valkenburg, "You Warriors don't show me much."

So today we're turning up the nasty meter with a top ten list of posts that made me go, "Huh? Did this really need to be written?"

Just remember when you're typing up your words to blast off into the inter-sphere, I'm taking notes. And I'm certainly burning a few bridges here, but you don't make people laugh without pissing off a few of your friends.

Here we go:

10. Great day today Ohhhhhhh, good for you. As for me, I got about 43 minutes of sleep thanks to a crying & pooping newborn and a two year old who is scared of Shrek.

9. looking forward to the weekend!!! I don't need any hump day, TGIF or similar updates. If I wanted to get excited about the weekend I would listen to the music of Rebecca Black.
8. U-C-O-N-N! D-O-N-T C-A-R-E
7. Just took my first ever yoga class! Really? And this was posted by a guy!
6. Getting ready for my crazy week… How crazy? Who are you, Prince?
5. Definitely a hot chocolate morning. Now this is something I would keep to myself rather than announcing via the internet. I could see "Definitely a jaeger shot morning" or "time for some cat tranquilizers", but not this.
4. Anyone knowledgeable or interested in beekeeping? Haha, just kidding, this post is f*cking fantastic!
3. So excited about my homemade oatmeal cookies… I feel like Judd Nelson in the Breakfast Club: "Gee honey, isn't life swell?"
2. NCIS! NCIS! Wait, what? The TV show? Like the one my 66 year old parents watch? OK, let me try: "HARRY'S LAW! HARRY'S LAW!"
1. Ugh……this day is going by so slow. Last-minute entry, just had to throw it in to round out my list.

Now before everyone gets all bent out of shape, I'm just horsing around. But if you recognize your post and are offended, feel free to "de-friend" me. I won't mind. I see Facebook like a weight thing: I like to keep it around an even 300.

Today's post is brought to you by McGuinness Brand Catheters. Check out their slogan: "If you're in the hospital and need help with your piss, McGuinness is here to assist."

Netflix Movie Roundup

You know, there was a glut of films that came out in fall and early winter. I realize your time is valuable, so I've taken the trouble of doing some capsulated reviews. Hope this helps with your Netflix queue or trip to the Redbox:

Get Low-More like Get Slow.

Easy A: Easy F if we're handing out grades
It's Kind of a Funny Story-It's kind of a crappy story. Whycome that Zach Galifantheopopoulaslisakis is in like EVERY movie that comes out?

(more importantly, why didn't spellcheck flag "whycome"?)
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps-Money may never sleep, but I passed out at the 35 minute mark
The Town If I wanted to see a bunch of people shooting machine guns at each other w/o a kill count, I'd watch the A Team
I'm Still Here- "I'm not", said the audience

Unstoppable- Unwatchable

Skyline-How about a plotline? The film's creators deserve a thorough alien probing

True Grit-True shi…ahhh, too easy

Stone-Stupid

Twelve-On a scale of 1 to 10? Zero

Love And Other Drugs-I'd love it if there were a drug that would make me forget I saw this crap

Cyrus-Marisa Tomei does another indy, but this time doesn't get topless. Avoid

Tron: Legacy-This generation's Ben Hur

Morning Glory-Like Network, but with more montages of Rachel McAdam running in high heels

Faster-The Cleveland Cavaliers of action movies

The Tourist-Worse than a New Orleans timeshare

Grown Ups-The actors must have used this as an excuse to go on vacation, no joke

Eat Pray Love-Eat Pray Puke (Review stolen from the NY Post….Zing!)

The Switch-Jennifer Anniston is still doing romantic comedies? Evidence there may be no God

Fair Game-Oh great, they finally made the Valerie Plame thing into a movie, oh and it stars Sean Penn, awesome

That's it for this installment. Take my word as gospel before you hit the "add" button. We'll catch up when they release that next Fast and the Furious movie.

NCAA Observations From the Last Person Who Should Be Making Them

Hey it must be spring right? Time for March madness. Say, did you ever see the game where the one team had a 10 point lead going into the half? And then they totally blow it and the rival team catches up? Everything is tied up at the final minute of play. And then the original team wins it after that sixty seconds is dragged into 25 minutes of personal fouls, time outs, coach con-fabs and crappy commercials. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I mean, Go Huskies! (I'm more excited about the upcoming AHL game in my neighborhood, but that's just me)


Observation: Is it just me or do players these days have some serious tattoo work? Is this an NCAA tournament or a Sturgis bike rally? It used to be guys had one tribal tattoo and maybe the Tasmanian Devil. Now everyone looks like WWE's The Undertaker.

Next topic: I'm really cleaning up in my eBay auctions. I made a killing on what I would refer to as the "posi-core" lot, with bands like Youth of Today (wishing Well pressing) Beyond, Gorilla Biscuits, Up Front (Hi Jeff & Jon!) and Verbal Assault. While it pains me to part with these records. (kinda) I think it's time to give them a new home. Plus I no longer have a turntable thanks to some clumsy, stupid movers. But that's going back a few years. I'll be curious to see what this Slipknot 7" goes for. Ha ha. How 'bout those two Metallica 45's? Oh man, back in the day I thought I'd be able to sell those one fine day and buy a palatial mansion. What will I get for them? 20 bucks? No bids? Yeah, I'm going with no bids. Don't care, I've done quite well off all the other stuff.

Good God, this post has become some kind of HTML nightmare. My eyes are killing me, I don't want to be in the Matrix anymore, give me the blue pill!