One of my great passions in life is music, particularly Indie Rock which is one of the most vague genres to ever exist. Indie covers quirky, childish pop with minimalist sounds and simplistic arrangements to a cacophonous symphony requiring more than fifteen musicians playing a complicated twelve minute opus. I thought that for my first post here at the gallery I would talk about a few of my favorite artists and explain why I love them. Operation Be Pretentious is a go:

The Decemberists

Literate, playful, and hyped from All Songs Considered on NPR to Stephen Colbert, these Washington State boys and girls play sea shanty pop music with more education than any impressed sailor could have dreamed of. With a catalog of songs with themes of revenge told in the belly of a whale to the longest “your mother is a whore” joke ever told, it’s no wonder that Colin Meloy and his wandering minstrels (as they refer to themselves) are one of the most hyped acts on the circuit today. Fans of the Apples in Stereo and Camera Obscura are poised to enjoy The Decemberists.
www.decemberists.com

Animal Collective

Geologist, Panda Bear, Deakin, and Avey Tare make up the freak-folk, noise project known as Animal Collective. Originating in Baltimore, Animal Collective later moved to New York City. Following the long history of collectives in Indie (ie Elephant 6 and Saddle Creek), these old friends work together and separately with all works involving at least two people being released under the moniker Animal Collective. They aren’t the best choice for your initial dive into the trendy sea of music, but once you get an ear for the abnormal, check ‘em out. Never has hooting, yipping, distorted vocal tracks and organic electronic music been blended so well. Fans of the Beach Boys and the Pixies especially tend to like them.
http://www.myanimalhome.net/

The Unicorns

Canada has a special place in the Indie scene; it’s a mystical place all of us hipsters wish we were from and it breeds some of the best musicians around such Broken Social Scene (including Feist who is best known for her solo album which garnered her some well-deserved attention), current darlings Tokyo Police Club, the well-known Arcade Fire, the noise thrash act AIDS Wolf, and the gone but not forgotten Unicorns. Releasing just two albums and an ep during their short career, although only “…and who will cut our hair when we’re gone” being worth a damn, this quirky unicorn head-wearing trio put out incredibly catchy pop records with some of the strangest lyrics I have ever heard in my headphones. They later went on to become Islands, a project with a new album due out sometime in the near future. Check ‘em out if you like I’m from Barcelona, Daniel Johnston, and The Pixies.
www.cs.mcgill.ca/~abatko/unicorns/ (fan site as the official site is long gone)

Defiance, Ohio

What happens when some angry motherfuckers spend all their time listening to Woody Guthrey, MDC (Millions of Dead Cops for those who aren’t familiar with 80’s hardcore) and the Violent Femmes? You get folk punk trailblazers Defiance, Ohio. Although not Indie in the most pure sense, this band funds themselves, puts out all their records for free online, and helps run a record commune in Bloomington, Indiana. This ragtag group of starving musicians make some of the most emotional and clever songs I’ve heard in a long time. If you ever wondered what punk rock without electric guitar sounds like, give them a listen.
http://defianceohio.terrorware.com/

This is an incredibly small list that barely scratches the surface of what the genre contains; if anything here has caught your interest, give it a listen. If you are already a jaded hipster who has heard it all and been to all the best shows before these guys sold out, give them another shot because something about these bands once spoke to you.

Image from: http://www.januaryseraph.com/

Since we are back and better than ever now, I thought I might show some appreciation for the people over at Entrecard for their support and dirty PM’s.  For those of you who don’t have your own website (I think there are three of you left), Entrecard is a community that allows you to build traffic and be given tips on making money by penniless drunks.  They are good people, so I am going to have a contest to give them some love.

If you don’t have a website - then there is no need for you to jump.  Just go over to gorilla mask and read all their links for the day.

http://www.gorillamask.net/

Entrecard people - you need to keep reading so you can win big loot!

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So - I got screwed by my old, bad host. They are ixwebhosting and they eat it. I am still wondering if they realize they were telling me that I should find a new host because my site is too popular. It still makes no sense to me, because unless there are a bunch of ghosts clicking around, I have no idea where all this ’suspicious activity’ is coming from.

Anyway - now I am on a shiny new host. And they kick ass. So yay. I still need to ftp 48658969058473726495 more things - but hey - things are looking up!

Also - I decided to move the batcave up in the directory - so here is the new link.

http://superficialgallery.com/Forums/

If that link does not work for you - it means that the new site is not showing up for you yet. You must live in a small, hick place if you haven’t propagated by now. Sorry, Jedediah. All members’ passwords will work as usual. I will fix the skin, etc tomorrow.

Did you know Adrienne Curry is married to Peter Brady? That’s what Wikipedia said anyway. Also, she was apparently on America’s Next Top Model. Who knew that? Well I suppose her. And Peter Brady. But nobody else!

And upon reflection, I don’t care about any of that stuff. You probably don’t either. But you should care that we have 225 pics of her. And one of them has Ron Jeremy in it as well. No joke. We really give you everything around here. Now go look.

Adrienne Curry

It doesn’t matter that you don’t know who Eddy Arnold is.  And I don’t want anyone to think that I am mister country music - but I can appreciate the fact that the guy started out during the Great Depression, and recorded his last album in 2005 (where Depressions are called: “recessions”).  That’s pretty bad ass.

Some people think he died because his wife of 56 years died not too long ago.  You hear about that a lot with old people.  Their spouse dies, then they die, cause they don’t know what else to do.  I think that’s pretty crappy - so I plan on going to visit a lot of widows and widowers with brochures for amusement parks and other distracting crap.  I’m that kind of guy.

If you want to hear an Eddy Arnold song that someone should sample for a rap song or something, you can listen after the jump.

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You may not know it to look at us, but we have legions of fans willing to write on themselves to demonstrate their love for the gallery.  And you could be one of them! If you want to just look at everyone else - then visit the NSFW FAN GALLERY.  Or, if you want to contribute, then use the contact form to send in a pic.

Don’t just say you love us.  Prove it.

We all know that The Dark Knight is not going to win Best Picture. It may win some technical awards - just none of the biggies. There will be too many movies where some asshole learns something about himself to let a good movie like Batman take the big prize. But it is still going to be smack-dab in the middle of the Oscar hoopla. And all because of the late Heath Ledger. Here is my reasoning behind Heath Ledger getting nominated for Best Supporting Actor:

1. He’s dead and nobody wants him to be.  Do not discount this factor.  It is very important.
2. He didn’t win one for Brokeback Mountain.  I am sure all the voters thought, “He is young; he will be nominated again.”  But now, because of number 1, he won’t.  So unless he is like the movie version of 2-Pac, there won’t be any more Heath Ledger movies.  If they want to nominate him, this is their chance.
3. It is actually gonna be good.  See, they finally figured out how to make Super Hero movies.  Put in actors that girls like to watch.  And make sure those actors can actually act.  And when those actors don’t ham it up (I’m looking at you, Jack Nicholson) you get a movie that doesn’t suck.
4. Last year’s Oscars were too depressing.  They need some popular movies mixed in this year so people don’t tune out.  Think about how many people watched when they thought Johnny Depp would win!
5. If he is nominated, I will watch the Oscars.  Using the science of demography, I figure if the Academy knows they can win me over (and winning me over is BIG since I am a super rich international playboy he-man) by nominating Heath (which does not rhyme with Death, though is looks like it should) then they will surely put him on the list.

And if you want further proof - check out the new trailer here.  It is bad ass. And I truly do hope he wins. That will well and truly wash Jack Nicholson as the Joker out of my mouth. It won’t wash Jack Nicholson as the guy who paid me to give him a hummer out of my mouth - but $17.00 will!  Score!

Sometimes when you try to do good you end up failing horribly. Henry Wrinkler and “The Fonz” probably had great intentions trying to do a PSA about sexual abuse and kidnapping kids. But Henry (and Mariette Hartley and John Ritter - a murders row of 80’s stars) ended up making the most disturbing video ever done.

I could hype it up more, but trust me… just click on the video. You will recoil in chills at how anyone could have decided to let this into the world.

At first I thought it was just me when my videos did not work. It usually is. But not this time. It seems to me as though YouTube is broken. If you can see the videos below, or if you can get to youtube, let me know in the comments. Otherwise, we will all have to talk to each other. And that would suck.

Now that I got the green light to post some pictures I dig, I figure why not start with this one. Because what’s sexy about Chloe Sevigny (beyond the fact that her name sounds nothing like how it is spelled) is the fact that even though you figure she may be pretentious or weird, it doesn’t really matter because she looks like how she does. That, and well… you’ve all seen the movie “Brown Bunny.” If you haven’t, check it out and then come back and look at her gallery - you’ll have a different outlook.

Chloe Sevigny