An early critique of "Nacho Libre"

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I’ve seen several commercials for the upcoming theatrical release of a Paramount feature entitled “Nacho Libre.” I feel very strongly that this will be an unbearable movie.

One of the famous national dishes of Malaysia is “Nasi Lemak,” which comprises a boiled egg, chicken curry, coconut-infused rice, pickled vegetables, and icanbilis (they are like tiny anchovies). The idea of this dish is balance; it wouldn’t necessarily be enjoyable to make an entire meal of just of one of these items, but with a sampling of each, the whole becomes greater than its parts.

That famous U.S. Oympic hockey team was an example of this phenomenon, as is this year’s American World Cup Team. The Police could also qualify, depending on your opinion of Sting’s solo career.

“Napolean Dynamite” was the motion picture where the “whole > parts” idea was at its best. Uncle Rico, Kip, Napolean, and Pedro could all steal scenes; conversely, no single character would be bearable as the unflinching star of the show. The personas, which in small doses were comical and quotable, were ultimately grating.

So why do I think that Nacho Libre is going to suck incomparable ass? Because it’s going to be 100 minutes of Pedro-speak. And that, my friends, will be as pleasurable as eating a bowl full of salty fishies.

I'm, uh, 28 now.

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You’ll notice I now have a digital camera and a mirror. This is so MySpace. So now.

This is actually kind of a big birthday for me, because a disproportionate number of rock stars have died at the age of 27. Even small ones that no one’s heard of, which gave my past year’s worth of red-eye plane flights and DIY gas line repairs that added element of sweat-yourself-thin terror they would have otherwise been lacking.

I’m playing it down this year, on account of how insanely up I played it last year, but…I dunno. It’s been a good year. Thank you to everyone who supported the band and made us feel so at home, wherever we were. We’ll have new music for you, someday.

In the meantime, though, I don’t have much in the way of blog-favors, but I do want to thank you for coming, so here’s side a and side b of a short little tape I used to woo the ladies with back in the day. And listening to it now, I think I’ve finally solved the mystery of why I never got laid in college:

It isn’t very good.

But it’s earnest, and it makes for a fine, lo-fi counterpoint to all those songs about Chewbacca and Madeline Albright, if I do say so myself.

Happy June,

Dave

LLC Reader Mail – Turbo Champion Edition

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I’m not generally one for astrology, but I know people who are, and some of them live with me. One of them, actually, and today she showed me this. It piqued my interest for two reasons:

1. I am a Gemini.
2. I have had all ten of these careers.

Tonight, I’m going to put on seven of these hats and respond to a message board post by avid fan Dan Pollitt. Why? The reasons are, again, twofold.

1. We have been really, really bad at fostering a sense of community around here since the fall tour ended, and there’s just no excuse for that. Until such time as we can once again stand before you with instruments, it is our responsibility to keep you at least kind of entertained here on the website, and I am leading that charge tonight because that’s what a co-frontman does.
2. This is Dan in the middle here:

So.

On to the questions:

(1) We need new album information!! Progress?? Song titles? Style?? HELP!

Dan, are you familiar with Joel Salatin’s method of seven-stage sustainable farming? Long story short, the man not only alternates his crops but brings cows out onto the corn fields after the harvest, then shuffles his cows off so that a mobile chicken coop can roll in and release the chickens, who will eat the grubs that have been hatching in the cow shit and transform them into chicken shit, which apparently has a whole different set of oxidants than the cow shit, and together they re-fertilize the soil for the next wave of intermediate vegetable crops, and the world actually winds up being a substantially better place because of his additive, rather than subtractive, agricultural methodology.

This is essentially what we of the LLC are doing, even as I type this: we are rolling out the chickens and inviting them to shit on our corn. In the short term, this means that no cows are present and nobody knows where they are. But in the long term, it means that said cows are coming back with a vengeance, just as soon as the intermediate crops have undergone one complete lifecycle and we’re able to relocate the, uh, cows.

Which is to say, we ran out of money and will be back in the studio as soon as we have some again.

(2) Next tour?? We already assume nothing this summer is going to happen...Cross country tours have to be brutal; assumingly fall is the next one...

The summer is, unfortunately, going to be mostly Speechless. (See above farming analogy.) But we are actively scheduling our fall, so we’ll let you know as that comes together, and will definitely be representing most (if not all) American time zones, in one way or another.

(3) If you could pick a Street Fighter II Turbo edition character, who would it be and why??

I think the screenshot speaks for itself.

Cheers,
Dave