The Bedlam in Goliath (aka Steady Live-Blogging)

The Mars Volta are like Marmite: you either love them, hate them, or have never heard of them. If you're a part of that last group, give 'em a listen. You'll be a part of either of the first two groups soon.

Like The Wire, Contra 4 (tough love is the best kind), Dostoevsky, and ONE HORIZONTAL RED BAR FOR NEGATIVE, I love The Mars Volta like you love my dick size. I wrote about my lust for Cedric and Omar back in 2006 when I reviewed Amputechture, so there's no need to do so again; if you got the itch, scratch those archives, cupcake. Just know that where we're going we don't need roads.

This isn't a review, I should add. Hell, I may not write a whole lot about the album itself, and I damn sure won't give it a rating. No, what this is is me wasting time, bugging out to The Mars Volta, and wearing a T-shirt. If you also like to wear T-shirts, I cordially invite you on a journey.

The Bedlam in Goliath

I think they've already announced the Academy Awards nominations. But I don't feel inclined to check. My ennui has gotten the best of me. That said, if No Country for Old Men and The Vig (for Eastern Promises) don't take home phallic gold statues on Oscar Night, I'm going to slit my wrists with bacon slices...Aberinkula? That sounds made up. Now is probably a good time to mention that none of the album's tracks are longer than ten minutes. Micro-management? In comparison to their oeuvre, that shit looks shorter than the songs on Madvillain ...Metatron? Sounds like a Transformer. Now is probably a good time to mention that I haven't been able to properly listen to the album because my girlfriend today started taking pills which were discontinued in Europe and sold for cheap to Korea, and now she has broccoli growing out her head. Global village!...Longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think! Held my breath when they gave me the gas! Wanted to see! I saw! I saw! Longer than you think! Longer than you think, Dad! I saw! I saw! Long Jaunt! Longer than you think!...Faint praise: The Mars Volta's music is so frenetic it's liable to cause miscarriages...Pitchfork review: The Mars Volta are like the 2 Girls 1 Cup video: they excrete and vomit their muse, and they know that, somewhere, an impressionable idiot is going to be right there to lap it up. The thing is, though, I can stomach the 2 Girls video. High five for hyperbole!...

Check back tomorrow. If you don't, I'm going to commit Contra.

Back. One mistake I made last night: as great as The Vig is in Eastern Promises, I hear Daniel Day Lewis is the shizziest of shiznets in There Will Be Blood. Apparently he's a shoe-in. If he wins, I won't be mad. Good guy. Had breakfast with him at Denny's a few years ago. He likes dipping his toast in egg yolk (who doesn't?), sometimes in his coffee. By the way, Tommy Lee Jones's role in No Country for Old Men isn't a supporting one? Work time fun?...Ilyena. I'm sorry I don't speak fucking hebrew. Wikipedia informs me that the song is about -- I shit you not -- Helen Mirrin. Does Frusciante play on this? I, um, left the liner notes in my car...The album's cover art is bananas, if you ask me. Amputechture's cover art -- done by the same artist, Jeff Jordan -- was okay, but this piece is creepy in an inexplicable way...Wax Simulacra. Now, just what in pluperfect hell is a simulacra? My guess: a doll sculpted in the likeness of a human being (I'm good at Balderdash). Dictionary.com's answer:

1. a slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance.
2. an effigy, image, or representation

I'm going to give myself a big pat on the back like Barry Horowitz for that one. This song is shorter than the cheap shots of whisky they sell in Hongdae. To compensate, here's one of the many terrific quotes from No Country for Old Men:

Carla Jean Moss: Where'd you get the pistol?
Llewelyn Moss: At the gettin' place.

(Boy, Stephen King, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, IMDB...I think I've written about two original sentences so far)...I'm going to smoke a square, have a drink, and watch episode #55 of The Wire. I promise that, when I return, I A) will be slightly inebriated and B) won't spoil anything...Oh, snap! They killed McNulty AND Bug? Thrown. For. A. Lupe Fiasco (I ghost wrote Juno)...Goliath. A concerto in FU minor. Someone's frying sausages downstairs again. I'm making it my duty right now to make love -- with an NES -- while listening to this song. Psychedelic tantra...News: a human head has been escavated from a metal cloud. Sports: figure skaters and ballerinas have supple legs, grotesque feet. Entertainment: you keep runnin that mouth I'm gonna take you in the back and screw ya...Tourniquet Man. Hooray for trite poetry! Probably should have been left behind like NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER...WAIT, MY DAUGHTER'S A MONGOLOID, NOW GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF EYERAN! Listening to a hesitant, streamlined Mars Volta record is one thing; but they don't even serve curly fries. There are no curly fries in Goliath? No vanilla milkshakes, either? I've been cut down to size. I am humiliated...

Back tomorrow. But before I go: I just noticed this morning that the storm washed away most of the rocks in my HELP sign.

lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers.

For Carl.

Day three. Two corrections: Tommy Lee Jones wasn't nominated for No Country for Old Pedophiles (word to Korea); it was for some flick called In the Valley of Elah. The second is this: Doc Brown gave me the clap. Then I went back in time and gave it right back to him, the white-haired bastard. It's a perpetual thing. Like a dragon swallowing its tail...I don't feel like looking at the Rorschach inkblots today, doctor. So either I lie and say they look like bowties and cat whiskers, or I say they're spread vaginas and cloven skulls. Regardless, the dice are loaded. Heads you win, tails I lose (put that shit in Watchmen)...Cavelettas. I'm sorry, I don't speak fucking Mexican. This "review" is to compensate for the album's songs brevity, by the way. If you find it tedious in any way, next time you see me holler like you know me...You know what the album is like, actually? Eating frozen concentrated orange juice. In black and white. For artistic effect...

OK. Back for the last time in this sorry excuse for a post. This weekend I had a chance to bask in the glory of The Bedlam in Goliath while riding the subway for what felt like a million hours squared (or the eternity of being awake during a jaunt, if you will), and I must say, The Mars Volta have created their best work yet. And seeing as how I'm a massive The Mars Volta homer, that's saying something. It is an awesome listening experience. Best song: "Goliath." Worst song: "Tourniquet Man" (and it's not that bad, really). Best lyric: I have a penis that will rip through the fabric of time. I know how THAT is...I take back every bad thing I said about Contra 4. The game, while initially harder than converting atheist lesbians to Christianity AND heterosexuality, gets easier the more you play it. Most of all, despite its difficulty, Contra 4 is FUN. I made it to the final boss today, and even though that motherfucker gave me a beatdown, I turned off my DS with a smile on my face. Because I know it's only a matter of time before I trek back to the harvest yard to deliver Black Viper the ultimate nut punch, and I'm going to have a blast getting there. Since I bought my DS I've played a lot of great games (New Super Mario Bros., Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Nintendogs...just checking if you're awake with that last one), but no other game has obsessed me as much as Contra 4. And isn't that what video games are all about? They should be to adult males what painting was to Charles Strickland...True story: last night found me once again in Bundang, where, so I'm told, I drank somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 beers and 10 tequilla shots in the space of three hours. Free tequilla is hard to turn down, I guess; there was a young Korean-French sous-chef at the bar who bought me round after round of Jose Cuervo because, as he told me, I look like a nice guy (keen eye, I AM a nice guy). Idealjetsam can attest that I've previously drunk tequilla with a Korean-Russian. Now all I have to do is drink tequilla with a Korean-Ghanian and I can collect on the bet I made with my sister five years ago. Anyway, Bacchus must have given me a mulligan, because I didn't have even a hint of a hangover this morning, even though I had to be carried from the bar before 2 AM (that's a shame I fear I will never live down). The human body truly is a strange vessel...If I wrote a coffee table book about Korean love motels, would you buy it? Aspiring photojournalists are encouraged to shoot me an email. Prerequisite: you have to be female...It baffles me why any man would consciously choose to wear a V-neck sweater. Why, did you break up with crew necks? I have few axioms in life, but two of them are "Always bet on black" and "Never trust a man in a V-neck sweater." If the V-neck sweater is black and your name happens to be Lincoln Burrows, however, I may make an exception...I'm not a hipster. Whatever the hell the definition of a hipster is (I think they're nerds who get mad pussy, but I have no solid evidence), I am not that. Because -- and this day has already dawned -- ich bin auslander und sprechen nicht gut Deutsch, Pitchfork named 8 Diagrams as one of the top 50 albums of 2007. The fuck? Just remember that it's the same site that championed Cam'ron and The Clipse and has something against The Mars Volta. The world's gone to shit...I'm not saying The Mist is a great film (though it's guten like tag, morgen, and nacht), but no other movie ending, except for maybe Casablanca's, exemplifies the "I don't know whether to laugh or cry" dynamic. Tell me I'm wrong. Please, I hear it so infrequently...Lastly, Psychedelic Kimchi is finna blow your mind sometime in the not-so-distant future with our pod cast. We're just waiting for the stars to align. In the meantime, I'm tempted to do my own dang and create a Kast in which I read Gravity's Rainbow in the voice of The Ultimate Warrior. Word to Kaufman.

Rating: 5/5 *_*

(and I damn sure won't give it a rating...)

Promises -- like condoms -- were made to be broken.