TheSixtyOne has held me in its musical grip since January and it doesn’t look to be letting go any time soon. I’ve already tried to explain to you why it’s so good. Let me see if I can put it another way in an attempt to lure you into the all-consuming fire.

You know how people are medically addicted to WoW these days? I know why. It’s because humans have an irresistible attraction to leveling up, regardless of the platform. We collect things. We get really good at golf and can describe every hole of every course in a 50 mile radius. We practice the guitar until we can play Flight of the Bumblebee at 340 beats per minute. We obsess over world records just to be able to say we hold the record.

There are a million areas of interest out there. And there are people getting better at each and every one of them as we speak.

We are all obsessive compulsive to a certain degree. The reason we’re not medically diagnosed with it is because most of us have the ability to resist it if it gets in the way of our daily lives. Barely.

Let’s look at a specific area of interest: music. I am not a bona fide music collector because my parents weren’t yuppies, but I am well on my way thanks almost entirely to thesixtyone. Music does something to me that nothing else can do. I’m not talking about performing it, I’m talking about blasting it in your car during afternoon rush hour on a Friday with your windows down, which coincidentally I’ll be doing in about 40 minutes.

There is a problem with being a music listener though. There are so many people that really really love music that it’s hard to break into the inner-culture unless you live on the fringe of society. It’s not very fun to become a “music collector” because one of two things tends to get in the way: 1) as soon as you begin to share your expertise with others a much more seasoned collector inevitably comes along and scoffs at your shallow opinions, informing you that he not only owns a vinyl copy of your favorite 10 albums, but he’s been backstage at all the concerts; or 2) you become that guy and lose most of your friends.

So, we’ve discussed the intense desire to “level up” in life. We’ve discussed how much we love music. And we’ve discussed why it’s frustrating to love music so much. I have good news for you. There is a place at the innernets where you can combine your desire to level up with discovering good new music that will be big in 6 months, all without the frustration of the music snob. That place is located here: www.thesixtyone.com

When I play WoW, the level-up aspect is very satisfying until I realize that ultimately it has no bearing on the “outside” world. I can’t share it with my wife or my friends because when you boil it down it is solely for my benefit.

When I listen to thesixtyone, on the other hand, not only is the level-up aspect insanely satisfying, but it has a positive effect on my “outside” world because it is teaching me about music and giving me songs, albums, and bands that I can take with me for the rest of my life. I’ve had long conversations with my friends who are already on the site (Dan, Adrian, Phil, Luke, Jesse, and my brother) over new artists, leveling up, getting achievements & feature unlocks, and techniques on playing the game.

With that being said, here is my list of top 5 bands that I’ve discovered so far. I would have never heard of any of these bands if it weren’t for thesixtyone.

5. The National

See their profile on thesixtyone.

Man these guys are eerie. A baritone lead singer paired with heavy piano usage and constant beats, plus semi-depressing lyrics and a sense of hopelessness, all somehow pull me into The National. I know, counter-intuitive right? Just listen to Fake Empire and be completely amazed.

Required listening:

4. Leatherbag

See their profile on thesixtyone.

Just one guy who calls himself Leatherbag (preforming with the aid of a band) has captured my heart with another lonely, half-depressed song called Caroline. It is one of my favorite songs of all time and I immediately went and learned it on the geetar - banjo licks and all.

Required listening:

The lyrics really get me. It’s a sad love song, and I just HAVE to post a sample for you below:

Standing around this northern town
Patiently I stand and wait
When I find my sweet Caroline
We’ll spread our wings and we’ll fly away

Her hair is gold and her words are silver
She’s a lily in the month of May
She’s tall as hell and like the wind she whispers
Do I love her I cannot say

WOW. I’m not one for poetry, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever heard anything so sad and poetic.

3. Chris Merritt

See their profile on thesixtyone.

Chris Merritt has about twice as many chords in his songs as other non-superhuman artists. Just listen to Linger or The Long Road to get a feel for his frequent key change-ups. He has a song on his new album called Mafia that’s even crazier. I had to listen to it three times to understand his insane chord progressions. What’s great is the song is still amazing and you can tell that a lot of thought went into each note.

Required listening:

What a great buildup and it doesn’t disappoint.

2. Your Vegas

See their profile on thesixtyone.

I guarantee you these guys are the next Coldplay/Snow Patrol/Keane/[enter favorite UK pop band]. Their songs are all epic. All. Epic. We’ll be hearing them on the radio in a few months.

Required listening:

The last half of the song is the most epic. It might be one of the best individual songs on all of thesixtyone.

1. White Light Riot

See their profile on thesixtyone.

I ordered a poster from White Light Riot’s merch site. I don’t buy music posters. That is saying a lot. These guys simply rock my socks right off every single day (which is how often I listen to at least one of their songs). I love them so much that when I noticed their entire album was available to download for free from thesixtyone, I notified them of the blunder and they quickly remedied it. I bet someone out there hates me. But you know what? I bought the album from their site for full price, so you better do the same.

Required listening:

“Can’t you see beyond the silver screens, the backward dreams, the scripted scenes?”

Well that about does it. Honorable mention includes Band of Horses, Ugress, and RAC. Sample some songs from these bands and tell me what you think, or let me know your favorite newly discovered bands on thesixtyone. I’m working on another Top Fiver for individual songs which is pretty enjoyable but much harder to nail down.

So, maybe I’ll see you at thesixtyone? My username is brianmcculloh and my profile is located here: thesixtyone.com/brianmcculloh. You can also see where I currently stand on thesixtyone if you look at my listener badge in the side column of this page where it says “Listen To One Song Plz:”.

I got a pingback on my Katy Perry vs. Zooey Deschanel post from an indie music blog entitled Radio Exile. After reading the article, I was a little confused.

Why don’t you take a gander at the article and see for yourself? From what I’ve been able to gather the author is trying to refute the point that these two broads could be twins. If that is indeed the case, I figured he wouldn’t pit an almost identical picture of each woman next to each other. He did. I also expected him to give at least one shred of evidence supporting his hypothesis. He didn’t.

Why, I ask again, did he write this blog post? Is it just an excuse to express his stalker-esque love for the two broads? Why does he choose to refute my wonderful, light-hearted little nugget of a blog post?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about the traffic it will bring me, and I’m honored that someone stumbled upon my article in Google (or whatever search engine he used). Plus, I love when people have different opinions than me - it makes for good discussions. I just think the content of the article is lacking a bit.

And who doesn’t like calling someone a “broad” every five years or so? It’s satisfying and holy. Broads.

Radio Exile, I’m sorry to say, but you are now labeled in the following category:

FAIL

You aren’t allowed to write an article without any relevant points and then say in summary “I made concise points” and expect it to make your crooked logic straight. I’m not trying to be mean here, just be aware that if you mess with a pathetic bumbling monster of a disarrayed crappy blog like The Gimcrack Miscellany, it’s going to attempt a quiet, meaningless retaliation

Also, I noticed he wasn’t thrilled about The Dark Knight. I’m beginning to think maybe he just has a case of Alternative Complex. You know, the complex where you hate things that are trendy just because they’re trendy. It’s a guess - I could be way off.

One more time, in case you missed it:

* This is obviously all in fun. Check out Radio Exile, and if you like what they have to say drop them a line in the comments. Every blog likes moar comments!

If you have never played Heroes of Might & Magic III (HOMM3), I highly recommend checking it out. I know everyone’s playing their fancy shmancy Wees, Ecksbockses, World of WoWcrafts and such nowadays, but I can attest that HOMM3 is some of the best fun I’ve ever had playing a video game. Of course, that’s coming from a guy that has logged over 1000 hours of Mario 3 in the past 2 months, so I might not be the most up-to-date gamer. At least I have a Wii. Plus I have the new Nintendo console. ROFL - I know.

Anyhoo, I know most of the visitors to this blog are looking for pics of Katy Perry or trying to find Ikariam tips, so to the one person that actually reads this post: you should try out this game if you are at all interested in RPGs, turn-based strategies, any type of fantasy, or simply if you’ve ever looked at a really good illustration of a dragon and thought “that’s pretty cool” - even if it was only for a split second until you remembered how dorky all that stuff is. You don’t have to tell anyone you read this, and no one will ever know you tried out the game. You have nothing to lose. It will be our little secret. Then you can go back to your “cool” empty life.

Look at the world view and lust:

“But Gimcracker, what’s this jive about ‘The Wake of Gods’? Is that a whole ‘nuther game?” Nope. It’s an expansion pack for HOMM3. THE expansion pack. It’s the best expansion pack ever made for any game or any thing, ever. It was made by the Russians so you know it’s good. Believe it or not, they still play HOMM3 over there. Especially in the towns where the Innerweb hasn’t been yet. And they thought to themselves, “You know what would make this game even better? Way more creatures, spells, artifacts, maps, skills, and heroes!”

Check out the Rampart town and salivate:

So, if you’ve never touched HOMM3 before, I would suggest buying Heroes III Complete from Amazon. You can get it for $13.50 after shipping and tax. That’s the cost of a CD. Come on, I saw you buy that Train album last year. That proves you can handle thirteen bucks even if it’s for something you’ll never use. And you know you’re tired of the rep grind in WoW. Admit it, your account is only still active because you’re afraid of the scorn of your friends if you quit. I have let that fear go.*

Peek at the battle screen and yearn:

That’s gotta be at least 1024 x 768.

After you play Heroes III Complete for a while and get to know the 7 different town types, you’re ready for the In The Wake of Gods expansion (click on that link, scroll down to “WoG 3.58f FILES” and download the allinon1.zip file. Unzip it, then run the native unpacker that you just unzipped, then run the install file.) Now you’re in for a world of fun. WoG presents you with so many new options that it is impossible to go through them all and understand them unless you’re already a seasoned HOMM3 player.

Feast your eyes on the character screen and crave:

In conclusion, you can go play all your new-fangled Halos and Call of Duties, or you can wait for Starcraft 2 or WOTLK expansion for WoW if you want to, but you know what? One day, when the Interscreens break, you will be stuck with Minesweeper and I’ll still have my HOMM3:WoG running. And then you will feel stupid for not listening to me.

*As soon as WOTLK comes out I am reactivating my account. Let the record show.

It stars an unlikely actor as “The Joker” who’s accidental death came just before filming was to wrap up. It’s a 2.5+ hour comic book movie spawned from the same franchise that contains filth like Batman & Robin. It had to compete with such summer action blockbusters as Wanted, Hellboy II, and Hancock.

It shattered 5 box office records, including highest-grossing opening weekend evAr.

It also received an astounding 94% on the Tomatometer. But are these reviewers just caught up in the current of such a huge film? Are they succumbing to the hype? Are they giving it good reviews just to honor the late Heath Ledger?

No. It was that good.

The Good

I want to see it again. That’s a good thing because it means the movie was full of so much plot that it was hard to take it all in the first time. In that respect, it was sort of like a Scorsese flick. I was so interested in all the characters that I forgot The Reason I was seeing it: Heath Ledger portraying The Joker. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman are very good actors. Christian Bale is fitting as Bruce Wayne. Newcomers Aaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal just build up the list of amazing actors. And for a second there I almost forgot that I had not seen the main star of the film yet.

Then he came on screen. Everyone in the audience got chills. People audibly reacted to his first scene. It’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed such a thing, and I found myself reacting the same way. It was impossible not to. It is some of the best acting that’s ever been done.

Every little detail of the Joker was interesting. The way he talked, his mannerisms, his walk, his facial expressions - sheer joys to behold. I’ll be honest, the rest of the movie could have been terrible and I still would have liked it. It could have been the plot of Indiana Jones 4, Angelina Jolie as the entire cast, the soundtrack of A Knight’s Tale, and directed by the guy who directed Serving Sarah, and as long as it had Heath Ledger as The Joker I would love it.

Hell, it could have been a made-for-TV autobiography of Angelina Jolie starring Angelina Jolie, directed by Angelina Jolie, produced by a homeless kid, with a soundtrack composed entirely of Angelina Jolie belching the theme song to Friends, in Arabic with Chinese subtitles, with every scene containing either A) Angelina Jolie talking about how rich and beautiful she is or B) Angelina Jolie just staring into the camera with that “I’ve got one eyebrow raised and a smug grin on my face signifying that I can totally kick anyone’s ass (except not in real life because I only weigh 80 pounds)” look in her eyes, and as long as that movie contained one sentence spoken by Heath Ledger as The Joker I would give it a 10 out of 10.

I hate Angelina Jolie.

The great thing about The Dark Knight is that even if you were to remove Heath Ledger as The Joker it would still be a great movie. Since this review is being written so close to opening weekend, I’ll try not to give any spoilers here. Basically, we are immersed in the mob scene of Chicago - I mean Gotham City - throughout most of the movie. There are multiple villains, which is an element that I always look for in a well-made “good vs. evil” type film, and some of them develop right before our eyes.

The “City vs. Hero” aspect, where the once grateful population is quick to turn on its masked savior, is also present, as it is in most other comic book movies, but it is done to a greater depth in The Dark Knight. There is also an unpredictable love triangle involving Bruce Wayne - at least I was thrown off by its outcome.

There is a lot of good to say here. You’ve probably read most of it in the myriad of other reviews out there, so I’ll spare you the trouble.

The Bad

It is a very good movie, but it is not a perfect movie. The Dark Knight is an awesome movie. Wall-E is a perfect movie. There are three main reasons The Dark Knight couldn’t make the leap to perfect.

1) Pace. The film seemed to move around erratically. I like the fact that you never know when it’s going to end and it keeps you guessing as to whether or not there is still another predicament around the corner or it’s truly about to end. But I don’t like how some scenes were just thrown in there. There was a scene where cops are standing on the roof by the bat signal waiting for Batman, which was confusing to me. It was almost like we were seeing a scene in a montage outside of the montage it belongs in. Some of the other scenes just ended too quickly and I found myself trying to figure out if an hour or a month had gone by since the last scene. Especially during the part of the movie when Harvey Dent makes his transformation.

2) Unbelief. While The Dark Knight is much more believable than say, Spider Man, it still couldn’t quite get away from the outlandishness that just gets under my skin in these types of movies. For instance, it isn’t even close to possible for anyone to pull off the giant wall-o’-sonar-cell-phones that gets relayed to the eyes in Batman’s suit and lets him see anything anywhere. He could even see into rooms where there were definitely no cell phones. How was this possible?

Falling 100 stories onto a car with a half-broken hang glider (bat wing) while holding someone in your arms would instantly kill both of you. There’s no question about it.

You can’t reassemble a fingerprint by replicating the ballistics that were used on the crime scene, analyzing how the bullet would’ve shattered, and then reverse-engineering the outcome. You just can’t.

Harvey Dent’s burnt face was cool looking but ludicrous. First of all, why didn’t his eye get the slightest bit burned along with every single fiber of his skin? Second of all, where is the infection? The bleeding? The skin trying to regrow? I’m not a doctor, but I know this was just a silly excuse to go crazy with some slick CGI. And don’t tell me “it was cauterized”. There were freaking chasms in the guy’s face. Cauterization doesn’t result in that. Why would he refuse pain killers and skin grafts? How could anyone stand this type of pain? How could anyone even function at all? This was totally ridiculous and I just couldn’t look past it.

3) Not enough Batman. Isn’t this a Batman series? Why was 90% of the movie devoid of Bruce Wayne and/or Batman? Don’t get me wrong - I loved the content - I’m just pointing out that it veered a bit from what it was supposed to be. I needed to see more about the guy that the series is supposed to be centered around. The movie would’ve been better titled “Chicago a.k.a. Gotham City And It’s Inhabitants And Comings And Goings And Whatnot”.

The Beratings

Acting - No beratings. Some of the best I’ve seen in a long time.

Plot - No beratings. It was so interesting I need to see it again just to catch it all.

Inconsistencies - 1 berating.
We have this character, Harvey Dent, who is a do-good DA who fights for Gotham, stands up for what he believes, and sacrifices himself to take the fall as Batman. Then he sustains an injury, loses the girl he loves (through no fault of the authorities I might add), and somehow becomes a villainous, murdering, super pain-tolerating evil man overnight. They never explained this one to me.

Unbelievable Events - 1 berating.
Not as bad as Spider Man, but still unbelievable enough at times to be distracting. If I get distracted, I start berating - it doesn’t matter the category or the movie.

Schematics - No beratings.

2/10 Beratings = See it at full price

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
>> 2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

It’s Friday. That means multiple posts chocked full of stuff I find on Digg. Hold on to your butts.

If you’ve seen my first post about Flight Of The Bumblebee performances, you know where I’m going with this. There is some new video footage of the fastest guitarist in the world. Officially the fastest. That’s not just an exaggeration.

He performs Flight Of The Bumblebee song faster and faster and faster. Each time I thought it was the fastest the song could possibly be performed. But then he goes one faster. If the speed dial goes to 10, he turned it to 11.

I think if he went any faster, the signal sent from the pickup in the guitar to the amplifier to the speakers to our ear drums wouldn’t be able to keep up with his fingers and it would result in some sort of warp in the time-space continuum flux capacitor 1.21 jigawatts huey lewis & the news elisabeth shue fish under the sea dance. And we would all die and/or get injured.

Fast forward the video to 2:56 and get ready to live.

Which films did I annoyingly quote and/or reference in this blog post? Hint: there are 4 of them.