How Jonathan London Ruined My Social Life (The 25 Songs of Christmas Part 5)

Today Geekscape founder Jonathan London turns 32 years old. While having a long and bizarrely complicated relationship with Mr. London I only actually got to meet him in person very recently. He is without a doubt one of (if not the) biggest driving force/motivation to my move to LA in July. Geekscape has indirectly (and directly) been one of the most important things in my life but I've never really told the whole story. I think it'd make an awesome blog entry myself.

Back in December of 2006 I got my first laptop; it's currently been my ONLY laptop. It was a mac-book pro that my friend (who worked for Apple) got me using an employee discount. I now had access to iTunes and I decided I'd check out these things called podcast I've been hearing so much about. I didn't really know what I wanted and somehow (and I honestly don't remember how anymore) i noticed a title that struck my interest... Geekscape. The episode was Episode 5: Nutpunch featuring co-host Scott Culver, to this day he is still one of my top 5 favorite Geekscape guests (despite NEVER returning for a second episode). I remember laughing my ass off and feeling like I could really relate to these guys, but what really struck my attention was hearing these two guys talking about bands like Don't Look Down who I knew of, but only thought I knew them because of growing up in the Tri-State area.

Using Facebook and Myspace I decided to track down the creator and host of this show, Jonathan London. London will tell you, he's one of the easiest internet personalities to get in touch with and it's true. His facebook has his screen name on it and I immediately IMed him, I told him how I just watched an episode and how great it was and we talked about different punk bands. Everyone week I'd listen to the new episode and then IM him to tell him how much I liked it. But that was really the extent of our friendship and relationship, until December of 2007.

Geekscape was getting ready to celebrate it's one year and I contacted Jonathan with an idea. "You should do a what a difference a year makes type segment, looking back at the first episode and seeing how far we came". Jonathan's answer was simply "if you're willing to watch episode 1 and give me notes... I'll do just that." So I did.

I think this single decision of doing exactly what he asked me to do is what changed our friendship. He started asking me if I'd be interested in doing other things, Join the forums, run the youtube page, run the facebook page, even write an occasional article. Geekscape started to become a second home; I'd spend hours on the forums, sometimes refreshing the page every couple minutes to see if someone had posted a new post. I even got my girlfriend at the time to become a scapist, and when my girlfriend dumped me... Geekscape was there to support me in ways that I was never able to ask my friends here in PA for help.

I began to distance myself from Geekscape in the spring of 2009. I just stopped watching, I'd still post occasionally, but I really stayed out of the loop. I'll never completely know why I did this, but I did. By the winter of 2009 I was at my lowest. I had no girlfriend, no job and was living with a married couple (though very good friends). I never really felt at home there, while M & L were very welcoming, I couldn't help but feel like I was always in the way, invading a honeymoon if you will. During this unhappiness, I started to watch the months of old Geekscape episodes.

Then I watched their coverage of that Summer's San Diego Comic Con. As I watched I couldn't help but think to myself... why aren't I out there? Almost a day or two later it was announced that Geekscape was going to have a booth at Comic Con that year and needed someone to run the Merch table. I contacted Jonathan and asked (and begged a little) for the job. If I got my own plane ticket and willing to help put up for the Hotel room... the job was mine. I accepted.

I got more involved with the site again, writing articles, running the twitter account, I was re-energized. As the trip kept nearing, I got more and more excited. I had already decided that I was going to move to LA the following summer, but this was the first time I'd ever actually see the city. I had developed many friendships with scapists and was curious to see how we'd get along. While i predicted that I'd hang out with a bunch of the scapists alot and only really see Jonathan here and there, I couldn't be further from wrong. I didn't anticipate that London and I would get along super well, in the end he was the one of the two people I became closed with. Perhaps it was just because we were forced to spend lots of time together between driving to San Diego and manning the booth together... but I'd like to believe it was because we both respected each other as creative minded people.

Regardless, July I'll be finally moving to LA. It's something I've said I'd do for over 13 years, but it's actually happening now, because of one man and his website. Thank You Jonathan London, you're one of the biggest inspirations in my life and I hope you have the Happiest of Birthdays.

In your honor I dedicate the 5th song in the 25 songs of Christmas to you; It's the Mark Hoppus and Ben Fold's covering the Blink 182 classic "Happy Holidays, You Bastard"

November Mix and 25 Songs of Christmas Part 4

It's a little late again but here's my mix for the month of November; Some of the stand out tracks are as follows:

Make Up Your Mind - Vacations and Never Been - In All The Same Houses are songs by local bands; One is new (Vacations) and the other has since broken up (In All The Same Houses) regardless both songs are insanely catchy and well crafted; check out both these groups for their other songs!

Mansions of Los Feliz - Eels, We Are Sex Bob-omb - Sex Bob-Omb and Bullet - Steel Train are all songs released this year that are on albums that are strong competitors for Album of the year. Meanwhile Fuck You - Cee Lo Green is the best single of the year as I declared back in September

Evaporated - Ben Folds Five has been one of my top 5 favorite songs since I first heard it in high school. I've named countless unproduced scripts Evaporated after this song title

I Wish - Skee-Lo is a throw-back to a simpler times in 90's hip hop, The News From Your Bed- Bishop Allen is just a catchy as hell song and while watching Angel for the first time i discovered It's Not Easy Being Green - Andy Hallett and found it to be a wonderfully beautiful and touching cover.

Full Track List
1. Make Up Your Mind - Vacations
2. Fuck You - Cee Lo Green
3. Clumsy Shy - Weston
4. Dance With me - The Leftovers
5. Evaporated - Ben Folds Five
6. Interstate Love Song - Stone Temple Pilots
7. Skull & Crossbones - Del Tha Funkee Homosapien
8. Mansions of Los Feliz - Eels
9. I Wish - Skee-Lo
10. On* - MC Chris
11. My Dad is Rich - Draco & the Malfoys
12. Pray for Rain - The Ergs
13. A Little Respect - Wheatus
14. Perfect Day - Suicide Machines
15. We Are Sex Bob-omb - Sex Bob-Omb
16. The Weight (Take a Load off Annie) - The Band
17. The News From Your Bed- Bishop Allen
18. Right Behind you - Our Lady Peace
19. Bullet - Steel Train
20. It's Not Easy Being Green - Andy Hallett
21. Dexter - The W's
22. Never Been - In All The Same Houses
23. Stolen - Dashboard Confessional

Downloadable at Rapidshare and Mediafire

Furthermore the Christmas song of today is one that was recently requested and well it's such a great song I couldn't turn it down. "Weird Al"'s 1986 demented christmas Carol Christmas At Ground Zero

The 25 Songs of Christmas Part 3

People keep telling me what songs to put on the list; I enjoy this and ask you to continue suggesting songs! If anything it makes me feel like people are actually reading my blog which is always a great feeling!

I'm getting increasingly more and more excited about christmas, after two "punk-rock" christmas songs... (Ben Folds is Punk Rock For Sissies) I decided to post a christmas classic done by that delightful group Barenaked Ladies. This is without competition my favorite cover of this carol... Sleigh Ride

The 25 Songs of Christmas Part 1 & 2

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. While Halloween is my favorite holiday, I absolutely adore Christmas. I love have spending time with my crazy ass family, watching christmas specials, fire-places, christmas carols, the xmas movies, Santa, The insomnia of not being able to sleep Christmas Eve, opening gifts, giving gifts and for the most part people just seem cheerier. And most of all I love the christmas music!

So I will be doing the 25 songs of CHristmas this month, each day for christmas I'll be posting some of my favorite christmas songs.

Let's get this kicked off because it's December 2nd so I'm already a day behind.

Day 1's Song is No Doubt's Cover of Oi to the World. I love this cover and I love the original but something about No Doubts ska-tastic version has always stuck with me. It's definitely one of the ultimate punk rock christmas songs.




Day 2's Song is a completely different beast; it's one of the most vulgar but hilarious christmas songs I can think of; Ben Fold's Bizarre Christmas Incident

Thanksgiving

So I intended to go on here and write a ridiculous satire about the first Thanksgiving full of date raping and murder of Indians during the meal; but I decided it's time for a sentimental post/rant.

Am I about to post my list of things I'm thankful for? What's the point? I've realized that while I'll celebrate Thanksgiving for the awesome food, I refuse to say what I'm thankful for; specificially in print on a blog, twitter account or facebook. It's all the same stuff every year, friends, family, job, money, future.

Yes, while things like Geekscape or having any job, family and friend is something that I can, could, would, should be thankful, why set a day apart from the rest for giving thanks? I'm thankful for all my friends and family; but I think we should be letting these people know how thankful with them EVERY DAY!

So fuck being thankful; just eat the shit out of some Turkey

I close with my favorite movie moment from my favorite Thanksgiving movie

Impossibly Bad Movies That I Love

Every once and a while I will watch a movie and I know it's bad. Critics hate it; most sensible people hate it; these films are so bad that they don't even have "ironic" cult followings, they're just generally considered garbage by any and everyone. But I have them on DVD without shame. Not shockingly they're all Horror movies; I want to draw attention to a five of these films:

American Psycho 2 - American Psycho is a brilliant novel by Bret Easton Ellis; despite the fact that director and writer of the film adaptation completely missed the point of the novel they were able to make a really good horror/thriller. *SPOILERS GALORE HERE* The Book implies that the murders all take place inside Patrick Bateman's head. The writer/director believes that Bateman DID murder the people but still left it slightly open-ended so if you wanted to, you could decide that he made it all up in his head. However this sequel tells the story about how a 10 year old girl managed to escape and murder Patrick Bateman when he was trying to kill her and her babysitter. *SPOILERS OVER* Now we follow this girl (Mila Kunos) as she murders most of her class mates in order to be the Teaching Assistant for her professor (Wiilliam Shatner). The film is complete garbage but I've watched this pile of shit at least 10 times; Is it William Shatner's over-acting? Mila Kunos Hot body? It's possible, it's certainly not for the script-writing or cinematography.

An American Werewolf in Paris - I can defend this pseduo-remake/sequel. It was one of the first horror movies I ever saw (just behind Frightners & Scream). I love this movie despite knowing it could have been even better. Tom Stern (writer/director of Freaked, the most under-appreciated movie of all time) was originally lined up to write and direct the film as a tongue-in-cheek horror/comedy, however after Fox hated Freaked he was fired from the film. To add insult to injury they still listed him as the writer of this movie despite not a single line of his original dialogue appearing in script. The film now shamelessly tries to be OVERLY extreme with "Bungee-Jumping" off the Effiel Tower (done extremely straight). Regardless I find the film charming and the characters extremely likable and it remains in my top 100 favorite films of all time despite all it's flaws.

Black X-mas - This movie should have been the worst remake of all time; but it's not. It is a remake of Black Christmas, one of the original slasher films (John Carpenter's Halloween was originally conceived as a sequel to it). The remake does a lot more wrong than it does right, but I think people had too high expectations for this film. I'd love to sit down and talk to the writers and director. I sincerely believe the film went the Sleepaway Camp route and aimed to just make the most over-the-top and bizarre death scenes ever. This is a film were a man gets stabbed to death by a Candy cane, another person decapitated by a Ice-Skate. Our killers origin story involves killing his family and cutting them into cookies and baking them. Stupid? Dumb? Yes, maybe... but I can't remember many other times I had more fun watching a movie in a theater (yes I saw this in theaters)

Dead Silence - There's not much to say about this one. I hate the Saw movies so I expected this film to be awful. Regardless I enjoyed it, I loved the completely ridiculous and impossible twist ending and let's face it...ventriloquist dummies are terrifying. I will say that this movie doesn't come close to being as great as Magic.

Jaws 3 - This is not me defending this film because it's still better than Jaws: The Revenge. This is me sincerely defending a movie considered one of the worst of all time. When I was a kid, my cousin and I used to spend a week at my grandfather's house. We'd play outside and at night watch movies. It was here that I discovered some of my favorite movies (including Alligator and the previously mentioned Freaked) but every single summer we'd watch the entire Jaws series, I learned to love the movies crap-tacular charm (yes even in Revenge), every single time I watch this movie I desperately wish that I could see the film in 3-D as it was filmed to be seen.

So I've said my peace, I don't expect any of my readers will jump to my defense on these films and I don't blame them. Regardless I still love these movies.

Yay Griffindor Knight!

After some terrible days at work and lots of stress I finally got to cut loose, foot loose; in fact I even kicked off sunday shoes. The weekend started off with me immediately going to catch an early showing of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 1 which is both my favorite Harry Potter movie and the one I think followed the book the closest (which isn't really saying much really) with Ed. After the party I discovered Geekscape published my article about Harry Potter Fandom (which you should totally read).

After the movie Ed and I met up with Mark, Lauralie and TP in order to get some Applebees; afterwards we went to Lauralie's house with Shrop and played some board games. To write about anything that was funny that night would be to example a lot of inside jokes. So I'll just post this picture from the night of TP

Today I was able to cross another thing off my list of my bucket list which was going to Medieval times. We got the Red/Yellow knight whom we (that is Ed, Shrop and I) referred to as the Gryffindor Knight (yes I know the ACTUAL colors are Gold and Scarlet but close enough).

It was a great and fun exciting GeekEnd.

In more news of awesome I only have 3 days of work this week and then a 4 day weekend (thank you Pilgrims for mercilessly murdering Indians).